
Class 
Book. 






8. 



mi 

CopigtoK? — —£*fy Z 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



33p Carl Iklmr^. 



HENRY CLAY. In American Statesmen 
Series. 2 vols. i6mo, gilt top, $2.50; 
half rnorocco, $5.00. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
$1.00. 



An Essay. i6mo, 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



3tn €££ap 



BY 



CARL SCHURZ 







W 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



O^ 



% 



£>5l 






Copyright, 1891, 

Bv CARL SCHURZ 

and 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



This essay was originally published in The 
Atlantic Monthly as a review of " Abraha?n 
Lincoln, a History" by John G. Nicolay and 
John Hay. Owing to many suggestions and 
requests which have come from various quarters 
to the author as well as the publishers, a republi- 
cation in book form has been undertaken, and the 
original text has been revised and slightly modi- 
fied to adapt it to that purpose. 

The portrait of Lincoln which forms the fron- 
tispiece is from a photograph taken (probably in 
i860) before his election to the Presidency, and is 
regarded by competent judges as one of the best 
and most characteristic likenesses of him extant. 
An etching by M. Rajon, the late emifient Freiich 
artist, and a recent masterly engraving on wood 
by Mr. Gustav Kruell, were both based upo?i it, 
but it is now for the first time reproduced, by 
the photogravure process, with absolute fidelity to 
the original, through the courtesy of its possessor, 
Mr. W. L. Garrison, of Boston. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 




O American can study the char- 
acter and career of Abraham 
Lincoln without being carried 
away by sentimental emotions. We are 
always inclined to idealize that which we 
love, — a state of mind very unfavorable to 
the exercise of sober critical judgment. 
It is therefore not surprising that most 
of those who have written or spoken on 
that extraordinary man, even while con- 
scientiously endeavoring to draw a life-like 
portraiture of his being, and to form a just 
estimate of his public conduct, should fiave 
drifted into more or less indiscriminating 
eulogy, painting his great features in the 
most glowing colors, and covering with 
tender shadings whatever might look like a 
blemish. 



Abraham Lincoln 



But Lincoln's position in history will 
not be exalted by mere praise of his vir- 
tues and abilities, nor by any concealment 
of his limitations and faults. The figure 
of the great man, one of whose peculiar 
charms consisted in his being so unlike all 
other great men, will rather lose than gain 
by the idealization which so easily runs 
into the commonplace. For it was dis- 
tinctly the weird mixture of qualities and 
forces in him, of the lofty with the com- 
mon, the ideal with the uncouth, of that 
which he had become with that which he 
had not ceased to be, that made him so 
fascinating a character among his fellow- 
men, gave him his singular power over 
their minds and hearts, and fitted him to 
be the greatest leader in the greatest crisis 
of our national life. 

His was indeed a marvelous growth. 
The statesman or the military hero born 
and reared in a log cabin is a familiar fig- 
ure in American history ; but we may 
search in vain among our celebrities for 



Abraham Lincoln 



one whose origin and early life equaled 
Abraham Lincoln's in wretchedness. He 
first saw the light in a miserable hovel in 
Kentucky, on a farm consisting of a few 
barren acres in a dreary neighborhood ; his 
father a typical " poor Southern white," 
shiftless and improvident, without ambi- 
tion for himself or his children, constantly 
looking for a new piece of land on which 
he might make a living without much 
work ; his mother, in her youth handsome 
and bright, grown prematurely coarse in 
feature and soured in mind by daily toil 
and care ; the whole household squalid, 
cheerless, and utterly void of elevating in- 
spirations. Only when the family had 
" moved" into the malarious backwoods of 
Indiana, the mother had died, and a step- 
mother, a woman of thrift and energy, had 
taken charge of the children, the shaggy- 
headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, 
then seven years old, " began to feel like a 
human being." Hard work was his early 
lot. When a mere boy he had to help in 



Abraham Lincoln 



supporting the family, either on his father's 
clearing, or hired out to other farmers to 
plough, or dig ditches, or chop wood, or 
drive ox teams ; occasionally also to " tend 
the baby," when the farmer's wife was 
otherwise engaged. He could regard it as 
an advancement to a higher sphere of ac- 
tivity when he obtained work in a " cross- 
roads store," where he amused the custom- 
ers by his talk over the counter; for he 
soon distinguished himself among the back- 
woods folk as one who had something to 
say worth listening to. To win that dis- 
tinction, he had to draw mainly upon his 
wits ; for, while his thirst for knowledge 
was great, his opportunities for satisfying 
that thirst were wofully slender. 

In the log school-house, which he could 
visit but little, he was taught only read- 
ing, writing, and elementary arithmetic. 
Among the people of the settlement, bush 
farmers and small tradesmen, he found 
none of uncommon intelligence or educa- 
tion ; but some of them had a few books, 



Abraham Lincoln 5 

which he borrowed eagerly. Thus he read 
and re-read yEsop's Fables, learning to tell 
stories with a point and to argue by para- 
bles ; he read Robinson Crusoe, The Pil- 
grim's Progress, a short history of the 
United States, and Weems' Life of Wash- 
ington. To the town constable's he went 
to read the Revised Statutes of Indiana. 
Every printed page that fell into his hands 
he would greedily devour, and his family 
and friends watched him with wonder, as 
the uncouth boy, after his daily work, 
crouched in a corner of the log cabin or 
outside under a tree, absorbed in a book 
while munching his supper of corn bread. 
In this manner he began to gather some 
knowledge, and sometimes he would aston- 
ish the girls with such startling remarks as 
that the earth was moving around the sun, 
and not the sun around the earth, and they 
marveled where "Abe" could have got 
such queer notions. Soon he also felt the 
impulse to write ; not only making extracts 
from books he wished to remember, but 



Abraham Lincoln 



also composing little essays of his own. 
First he sketched these with charcoal on a 
wooden shovel scraped white with a draw- 
ing-knife, or on basswood shingles. Then 
he transferred them to paper, which was 
a scarce commodity in the Lincoln house- 
hold ; taking care to cut his expressions 
close, so that they might not cover too 
much space, — a style - forming method 
greatly to be commended. Seeing boys 
put a burning coal on the back of a wood 
turtle, he was moved to write on cruelty to 
animals. Seeing men intoxicated with 
whiskey, he wrote on temperance. In 
verse-making, too, he tried himself, and 
in satire on persons offensive to him or 
others, — satire the rustic wit of which 
was not always fit for ears polite. Also 
political thoughts he put upon paper, and 
some of his pieces were even deemed 
good enough for publication in the county 
weekly. 

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation 
as a clever young man, which he increased 






Abraham Lincoln 



by his performances as a speaker, not sel- 
dom drawing upon himself the dissatisfac- 
tion of his employers by mounting a stump 
in the field, and keeping the farm hands 
from their work by little speeches in a jo- 
cose and sometimes also a serious vein. 
At the rude social frolics of the settlement 
he became an important person, telling 
funny stories, mimicking the itinerant 
preachers who had happened to pass by, 
and making his mark at wrestling matches, 
too ; for at the age of seventeen he had at- 
tained his full height, six feet four inches 
in his stockings, if he had any, and a ter- 
ribly muscular clodhopper he was. But he 
was known never to use his extraordinary 
strength to the injury or humiliation of 
others ; rather to do them a kindly turn, 
or to enforce justice and fair dealing be- 
tween them. All this made him a favorite 
in backwoods society, although in some 
things he appeared a little odd to his 
friends. Far more than any of them, he 
was given not only to reading, but to fits 



8 Abraham Lincoln 

of abstraction, to quiet musing with him- 
self, and also to strange spells of melan- 
choly, from which he often would pass in 
a moment to rollicking outbursts of droll 
humor. But on the whole he was one of 
the people among whom he lived ; in ap- 
pearance perhaps even a little more un- 
couth than most of them, — a very tall, 
rawboned youth, with large features, dark, 
shriveled skin, and rebellious hair; his 
arms and legs long, out of proportion ; clad 
in deerskin trousers, which from frequent 
exposure to the rain had shrunk so as to 
sit tightly on his limbs, leaving several 
inches of bluish shin exposed between their 
lower end and the heavy tan-colored shoes ; 
the nether garment held usually by only 
one suspender, that was strung over a 
coarse home-made shirt ; the head covered 
in winter with a coonskin cap, in summer 
with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape, 
without a band. 

It is doubtful whether he felt him- 
self much superior to his surroundings, 



Abraham Lincoln 



although he confessed to a yearning for 
some knowledge of the world outside of 
the circle in which he lived. This wish 
was gratified ; but how ? At the age of 
nineteen he went down the Mississippi to 
New Orleans as a flatboat hand, tempo- 
rarily joining a trade many members of 
which at that time still took pride in be- 
ing called "half horse and half alligator." 
After his return he worked and lived in 
the old way. until the spring of 1830, when 
his father " moved again," this time to Illi- 
nois ; and on the journey of fifteen days 
" Abe " had to drive the ox wagon which 
carried the household goods. Another log 
cabin was built, and then, fencing a field, 
Abraham Lincoln split those historic rails 
which were destined to play so picturesque 
a part in the presidential campaign twenty- 
eight years later. 

Having come of age, Lincoln left the 
family, and " struck out for himself." He 
had to " take jobs whenever he could get 
them." The first of these carried him 



10 Abraham Lincoln 

again as a flatboat hand to New Orleans. 
There something happened that made a 
lasting impression upon his soul : he wit- 
nessed a slave auction. " His heart bled," 
wrote one of his companions ; " said no- 
thing much ; was silent ; looked bad. I can 
say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that 
he formed his opinion on slavery. It run 
its iron in him then and there, May, 1831. 
I have heard him say so often." Then he 
lived several years at New Salem, in Illi- 
nois, a small mushroom village, with a mill, 
some " stores" and whiskey shops, that 
rose quickly, and soon disappeared again. 
It was a desolate, disjointed, half-working 
and half-loitering life, without any other 
aim than to gain food and shelter from day 
to day. He served as pilot on a steamboat 
trip, then as clerk in a store and a mill ; 
business failing, he was adrift for some 
time. Being compelled to measure his 
strength with the chief bully of the neigh- 
borhood, and overcoming him, he became 
a noted person in that muscular commu- 



Abraham Lincoln 1 1 

nity, and won the esteem and friendship of 
the ruling gang of ruffians to such a de- 
gree that, when the Black Hawk war broke 
out, they elected him, a young man of 
twenty-three, captain of a volunteer com- 
pany, composed mainly of roughs of their 
kind. He took the field, and his most 
noteworthy deed of valor consisted, not in 
killing an Indian, but in protecting against 
his own men, at the peril of his own life, 
the life of an old savage who had strayed 
into his camp. 

The Black Hawk war over, he turned to 
politics. The step from the captaincy of 
a volunteer company to a candidacy for 
a seat in the legislature seemed a natural 
one. But his popularity, although great in 
New Salem, had not spread far enough over 
the district, and he was defeated. Then 
the wretched hand-to-mouth struggle be- 
gan again. He " set up in store-business " 
with a dissolute partner, who drank whis- 
key while Lincoln was reading books. The 
result was a disastrous failure and a load 



12 Abraham Lincoln 

of debt. Thereupon he became a deputy 
surveyor, and was appointed postmaster of 
New Salem, the business of the post office 
being so small that he could carry the in- 
coming and outgoing mail in his hat. All 
this could not lift him from poverty, and 
his surveying instruments and horse and 
saddle were sold by the sheriff for debt. 

But while all this misery was upon him 
his ambition rose to higher aims. He 
walked many miles to borrow from a 
school-master a grammar with which to 
improve his language. A lawyer lent him 
a copy of Blackstone, and he began to 
study law. People would look wonderingly 
at the grotesque figure lying in the grass, 
" with his feet up a tree," or sitting on 
a fence, as, absorbed in a book, he learned 
to construct correct sentences and made 
himself a jurist. At once he gained a 
little practice, pettifogging before a justice 
of the peace for friends, without expect- 
ing a fee. Judicial functions, too, were 
thrust upon him, but only at horse-races or 



Abraham Lincoln 13 

wrestling matches, where his acknowledged 
honesty and fairness gave his verdicts un- 
disputed authority. His popularity grew 
apace, and soon he could be a candidate 
for the legislature again. Although he 
called himself a Whig, an ardent admirer 
of Henry Clay, his clever stump speeches 
won him the election in the strongly Dem- 
ocratic district. Then for the first time, 
perhaps, he thought seriously of his out- 
ward appearance. So far he had been con- 
tent with a garb of " Kentucky jeans," not 
seldom ragged, usually patched, and al- 
ways shabby. Now he borrowed some 
money from a friend to buy a new suit of 
clothes — " store clothes " — fit for a Sanga- 
mon County statesman ; and thus adorned 
he set out for the state capital, Vandalia, 
to take his seat among the lawmakers. 

His legislative career, which stretched 
over several sessions, for he was thrice re- 
elected, in 1836, 1838, and 1840, was not 
remarkably brilliant. He did, indeed, not 
lack ambition. He dreamed even of mak- 



14 Abraham Lincoln 

ing himself u the De Witt Clinton of Illi- 
nois," and he actually distinguished him- 
self by zealous and effective work in those 
" log-rolling " operations by which the 
young State received " a general system of 
internal improvements " in the shape of 
railroads, canals, and banks, — a reckless 
policy, burdening the State with debt, and 
producing the usual crop of political de- 
moralization, but a policy characteristic of 
the time and the impatiently enterprising 
spirit of the Western people. Lincoln, no 
doubt with the best intentions, but with 
little knowledge of the subject, simply fol- 
lowed the popular current. The achieve- 
ment in which, perhaps, he gloried most 
was the removal of the state government 
from Vandalia to Springfield ; one of those 
triumphs of political management which 
are apt to be the pride of the small politi- 
cian's statesmanship. One thing, however, 
he did in which his true nature asserted 
itself, and which gave distinct promise of 
the future pursuit of high aims. Against 



Abraham Lincoln 15 

an overwhelming preponderance of senti- 
ment in the legislature, followed by only 
one other member, he recorded his protest 
against a proslavery resolution, — that pro- 
test declaring "the institution of slavery 
to be founded on both injustice and bad 
policy." This was not only the irrepres- 
sible voice of his conscience ; it was true 
moral valor, too ; for at that time, in many 
parts of the West, an abolitionist was re- 
garded as little better than a horse-thief, 
and even " Abe Lincoln " would hardly 
have been forgiven his anti-slavery princi- 
ples, had he not been known as such an 
"uncommon good fellow." But here, in 
obedience to the great conviction of his 
life, he manifested his courage to stand 
alone, — that courage which is the first 
requisite of leadership in a great cause. 

Together with his reputation and influ- 
ence as a politician grew his law practice, 
especially after he had removed from New 
Salem to Springfield, and associated him- 
self with a practitioner of good standing. 



1 6 Abraham Lincoln 

He had now at last won a fixed position in 
society. He became a successful lawyer, 
less, indeed, by his learning as a jurist than 
by his effectiveness as an advocate and by 
the striking uprightness of his character ; 
and it may truly be said that his vivid sense 
of truth and justice had much to do with 
his effectiveness as an advocate. He would 
refuse to act as the attorney even of per- 
sonal friends when he saw the right on the 
other side. He would abandon cases, even 
during trial, when the testimony convinced 
him that his client was in the wrong. He 
would dissuade those who sought his ser- 
vice from pursuing an obtainable advantage 
when their claims seemed to him unfair. 
Presenting his very first case in the United 
States Circuit Court, the only question 
being one of authority, he declared that, 
upon careful examination, he found all the 
authorities on the other side, and none 
on his. Persons accused of crime, when 
he thought them guilty, he would not de- 
fend at all, or, attempting their defense, he 



Abraham Lincoln iy 

was unable to put forth his powers. One 
notable exception is on record, when his 
personal sympathies had been strongly 
aroused. But when he felt himself to be 
the protector of innocence, the defender 
of justice, or the prosecutor of wrong, he 
frequently disclosed such unexpected re- 
sources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, 
and rose to such fervor of appeal as to as- 
tonish and overwhelm his hearers, and 
make him fairly irresistible. Even an or- 
dinary law argument, coming from him, 
seldom failed to produce the impression 
that he was profoundly convinced of the 
soundness of his position. It is not sur- 
prising that the mere appearance of so con- 
scientious an attorney in any case should 
have carried, not only to juries, but even 
to judges, almost a presumption of right 
on his side, and that the people began to 
call him, sincerely meaning it, "honest 
Abe Lincoln." 

In the mean time he had private sorrows 
and trials of a painfully afflicting nature. 



1 8 Abraham Lincoln 

He had loved and been loved by a fair and 
estimable girl, Ann Rutledge, who died in 
the flower of her youth and beauty, and he 
mourned her loss with such intensity of 
grief that his friends feared for his reason. 
Recovering from his morbid depression, he 
bestowed what he thought a new affection 
upon another lady, who refused him. And 
finally, moderately prosperous in his world- 
ly affairs, and having prospects of political 
distinction before him, he paid his ad- 
dresses to Mary Todd, of Kentucky, and 
was accepted. But then tormenting doubts 
of the genuineness of his own affection 
for her, of the compatibility of their char- 
acters, and of their future happiness came 
upon him. His distress was so great that 
he felt himself in danger of suicide, and 
feared to carry a pocket-knife with him ; 
and he gave mortal offense to his bride by 
not appearing on the appointed wedding 
day. Now the torturing consciousness of 
the wrong he had done her grew unendur- 
able. He won back her affection, ended 



Abraham Lincoln 19 

the agony by marrying her, and became a 
faithful and patient husband and a good 
father. But it was no secret to those who 
knew the family well, that his domestic life 
was full of trials. The erratic temper of 
his wife not seldom put the gentleness of 
his nature to the severest tests ; and these 
troubles and struggles, which accompanied 
him through all the vicissitudes of his life 
from the modest home in Springfield to 
the White House at Washington, adding 
untold private heartburnings to his public 
cares, and sometimes precipitating upon 
him incredible embarrassments in the dis- 
charge of his public duties, form one of 
the most pathetic features of his career. 

He continued to " ride the circuit," read 
books while traveling in his buggy, told 
funny stories to his fellow-lawyers in the 
tavern, chatted familiarly with his neigh- 
bors around the stove in the store and at 
the post-office, had his hours of melancholy 
brooding as of old, and became more and 
more widely known and trusted and be- 



20 Abraham Lincoln 

loved among the people of his State for his 
ability as a lawyer and politician, for the 
uprightness of his character and the ever- 
flowing spring of sympathetic kindness in 
his heart. His main ambition was con- 
fessedly that of political distinction ; but 
hardly any one would at that time have 
seen in him the man destined to lead the 
nation through the greatest crisis of the 
century. 

His time had not yet come when, in 
1846, he was elected to Congress. In a 
clever speech in the House of Representa- 
tives, he denounced President Polk for hav- 
ing unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and 
he amused the Committee of the Whole by 
a witty attack upon General Cass. More 
important was the expression he gave to 
his anti-slavery impulses by offering a bill 
looking to the emancipation of the slaves 
in the District of Columbia, and by his re- 
peated votes for the famous Wilmot Pro- 
viso, intended to exclude slavery from the 
Territories acquired from Mexico. But 



Abraham Lincoln 21 

when, at the expiration of his term, in 
March, 1849, ne ^ft ms seat > ne gloomily 
despaired of ever seeing the day when the 
cause nearest to his heart would be rightly 
grasped by the people, and when he would 
be able to render any service to his coun- 
try in solving the great problem. Nor had 
his career as a member of Congress in any 
sense been such as to gratify his ambition. 
Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great 
destiny for himself, it must have been 
weak at that period ; for he actually sought 
to obtain from the new Whig President, 
General Taylor, the place of Commissioner 
of the General Land Office, willing to bury 
himself in one of the administrative bu- 
reaus of the government. Fortunately for 
the country, he failed ; and no less fortu- 
nately, when, later, the territorial gover- 
norship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs. 
Lincoln's protest induced him to decline 
it. Returning to Springfield, he gave him- 
self with renewed zest to his law practice, 
acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850 



22 Abraham Lincoln 

with reluctance and a mental reservation, 
supported in the presidential campaign of 
1852 the Whig candidate in some spirit- 
less speeches, and took but a languid inter- 
est in the politics of the day. But just 
then his time was drawing near. 

The peace promised, and apparently in- 
augurated, by the Compromise of 1850 was 
rudely broken by the introduction of the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. The repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, opening the 
Territories of the United States, the heri- 
tage of coming generations, to the invasion 
of slavery, suddenly revealed the whole 
significance of the slavery question to the 
people of the free States, and thrust itself 
into the politics of the country as the par- 
amount issue. Something like an electric 
shock flashed through the North. Men 
who but a short time before had been ab- 
sorbed by their business pursuits, and de- 
precated all political agitation, were star- 
tled out of their security by a sudden 
alarm, and excitedly took sides. That rest- 



Abraham Lincoln 23 

less trouble of conscience about slavery, 
which even in times of apparent repose 
had secretly disturbed the souls of North- 
ern people, broke forth in an utterance 
louder than ever. The bonds of accus 
tomed party allegiance gave way. Anti- 
slavery Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs 
felt themselves drawn together by a com- 
mon overpowering sentiment, and soon 
they began to rally in a new organization. 
The Republican party sprang into being to 
meet the overruling call of the hour. Then 
Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He 
rapidly advanced to a position of conspicu- 
ous championship in the struggle. This, 
however, was not owing to his virtues and 
abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery ques- 
tion stirred his soul in its profoundest 
depths ; it was, as one of his intimate 
friends said, "the only one on which he 
would become excited ; " it called forth all 
his faculties and energies. Yet there were 
many others who, having long and ardu- 
ously fought the anti-slavery battle in the 



24 Abraham Lincoln 

popular assembly, or in the press, or in 
the halls of Congress, far surpassed him in 
prestige, and compared with whom he was 
still an obscure and untried man. His re- 
putation, although highly honorable and 
well earned, had so far been essentially 
local. As a stump-speaker in Whig can- 
vasses outside of his State he had attracted 
comparatively little attention ; but in Illi- 
nois he had been recognized as one of the 
foremost men of the Whig party. Among 
the opponents of the Nebraska bill he oc- 
cupied in his State so important a position, 
that in 1854 he was the choice of a large 
majority of the " Anti-Nebraska men " in 
the legislature for a seat in the Senate 
of the United States which then became 
vacant ; and when he, an old Whig, could 
not obtain the votes of the Anti-Nebraska 
Democrats necessary to make a majority, 
he generously urged his friends to trans- 
fer their votes to Lyman Trumbull, who 
was then elected. Two years later, in the 
first national convention of the Republican 



Abraham Lincoln 25 

party, the delegation from Illinois brought 
him forward as a candidate for the vice- 
presidency, and he received respectable 
support. Still, the name of Abraham Lin- 
coln was not widely known beyond the 
boundaries of his own State. But now it 
was this local prominence in Illinois that 
put him in a position of peculiar advan- 
tage on the battlefield of national politics. 
In the assault on the Missouri Compro- 
mise which broke down all legal barriers 
to the spread of slavery, Stephen Arnold 
Douglas was the ostensible leader and cen- 
tral figure ; and Douglas was a Senator 
from Illinois, Lincoln's State. Douglas's 
national theatre of action was the Senate, 
but in his constituency in Illinois were the 
roots of his official position and power. 
What he did in the Senate he had to jus- 
tify before the people of Illinois, in order 
to maintain himself in place ; and in Illi- 
nois all eyes turned to Lincoln as Doug- 
las's natural antagonist. 

As very young men they had come to 



26 Abraham Lincoln 

Illinois, Lincoln from Indiana, Douglas 
from Vermont, and had grown up together 
in public life, Douglas as a Democrat, Lin- 
coln as a Whig. They had met first in 
Vandalia, in 1834, when Lincoln was in the 
legislature and Douglas in the lobby ; and 
again in 1836, both as members of the leg- 
islature. Douglas, a very able politician, 
of the agile, combative, audacious, "push- 
ing " sort, rose in political distinction with 
remarkable rapidity. In quick succession 
he became a member of the legislature, a 
State's attorney, secretary of state, a judge 
on the supreme bench of Illinois, three 
times a Representative in Congress, and a 
Senator of the United States when only 
thirty-nine years old. In the national 
Democratic convention of 1852, he ap- 
peared even as an aspirant to the nomina- 
tion for the presidency, as the favorite of 
"young America," and received a respect- 
able vote. He had far outstripped Lincoln 
in what is commonly called political suc- 
cess and in reputation. But it had fre- 



Abraham Lincoln 27 

quently happened that in political cam- 
paigns Lincoln felt himself impelled, or 
was selected by his Whig friends, to an- 
swer Douglas's speeches ; and thus the 
two were looked upon, in a large part of 
the State at least, as the representative 
combatants of their respective parties in 
the debates before popular meetings. As 
soon, therefore, as, after the passage of his 
Kansas-Nebraska bill, Douglas returned to 
Illinois to defend his cause before his con- 
stituents, Lincoln, obeying not only his 
own impulse, but also general expectation, 
stepped forward as his principal oppo- 
nent. Thus the struggle about the princi- 
ples involved in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
or, in a broader sense, the struggle between 
freedom and slavery, assumed in Illinois 
the outward form of a personal contest 
between Lincoln and Douglas ; and, as it 
continued and became more animated, that 
personal contest in Illinois was watched 
with constantly increasing interest by the 
whole country. When, in 1858, Douglas's 



28 Abraham Lincoln 

senatorial term being about to expire, Lin- 
coln was formally designated by the Re- 
publican convention of Illinois as their 
candidate for the Senate, to take Douglas's 
place, and the two contestants agreed to 
debate the questions at issue face to face 
in a series of public meetings, the eyes of 
the whole American people were turned 
eagerly to that one point ; and the specta- 
cle reminded one of those lays of ancient 
times telling of two armies, in battle array, 
standing still to see their two principal 
champions fight out the contested cause 
between the lines in single combat. 

Lincoln had then reached the full matu- 
rity of his powers. His equipment as a 
statesman did not embrace a comprehen- 
sive knowledge of public affairs. What he 
had studied he had indeed made his own, 
with the eager craving and that zealous 
tenacity characteristic of superior minds 
learning under difficulties. But his narrow 
opportunities and the unsteady life he had 
led during his younger years had not per- 



Abraham Lincoln 29 

mitted the accumulation of large stores in 
his mind. It is true, in political campaigns 
he had occasionally spoken on the osten- 
sible issues between the Whigs and the 
Democrats, the tariff, internal improve- 
ments, banks, and so on, but only in a per- 
functory manner. Had he ever given 
much serious thought and study to these 
subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind 
so prolific of original conceits as his would 
certainly have produced some utterance 
upon them worth remembering. His soul 
had evidently never been deeply stirred by 
such topics. But when his moral nature 
was aroused, his brain developed an untir- 
ing activity until it had mastered all the 
knowledge within reach. As soon as the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise had 
thrust the slavery question into politics as 
the paramount issue, Lincoln plunged into 
an arduous study of all its legal, histori- 
cal, and moral aspects, and then his mind 
became a complete arsenal of argument. 
His rich natural gifts, trained by long and 



30 Abraham Lincoln 

varied practice, had made him an orator of 
rare persuasiveness. In his immature days, 
he had pleased himself for a short period 
with that inflated, high-flown style which, 
among the uncultivated, passes for " beau- 
tiful speaking." His inborn truthfulness 
and his artistic instinct soon overcame that 
aberration, and revealed to him the noble 
beauty and strength of simplicity. He pos- 
sessed an uncommon power of clear and 
compact statement, which might have re- 
minded those who knew the story of his 
early youth, of the efforts of the poor boy, 
when he copied his compositions from the 
scraped wooden shovel, carefully to trim 
his expressions in order to save paper. His 
language had the energy of honest direct- 
ness, and he was a master of logical lucid- 
ity. He loved to point and enliven his 
reasoning by humorous illustrations, usu- 
ally anecdotes of Western life, of which 
he had an inexhaustible store at his com- 
mand. These anecdotes had not seldom a 
flavor of rustic robustness about them, but 



Abraham Liiicoln 31 

he used them with great effect, while amus- 
ing the audience, to give life to an abstrac- 
tion, to explode an absurdity, to clinch 
an argument, to drive home an admoni- 
tion. The natural kindliness of his tone, 
softening prejudice and disarming parti- 
san rancor, would often open to his rea- 
soning a way into minds most unwilling to 
receive it. 

Yet his greatest power consisted in the 
charm of his individuality. That charm 
did not, in the ordinary way, appeal to the 
ear or to the eye. His voice was not melo- 
dious ; rather shrill and piercing, especially 
when it rose to its high treble in moments 
of great animation. His figure was un- 
handsome, and the action of his unwieldy 
limbs awkward. He commanded none of 
the outward graces of oratory as they are 
commonly understood. His charm was of 
a different kind. It flowed from the rare 
depth and genuineness of his convictions 
and his sympathetic feelings. Sympathy 
was the strongest element in his nature. 



32 Abraham Lincoln 

One of his biographers, who knew him 
before he became President, says : " Lin- 
coln's compassion might be stirred deeply 
by an object present, but never by an 
object absent and unseen. In the former 
case he would most likely extend relief, 
with little inquiry into the merits of the 
case, because, as he expressed it himself, 
it Hook a pain out of his own heart." 1 
Only half of this is correct. It is certainly 
true that he could not witness any individ- 
ual distress or oppression, or any kind of 
suffering, without feeling a pang of pain 
himself, and that by relieving as much as 
he could the suffering of others he put an 
end to his own. This compassionate im- 
pulse to help he felt not only for human 
beings, but for every living creature. As 
in his boyhood he angrily reproved the 
boys who tormented a wood turtle by put- 
ting a burning coal on its back, so, we are 
told, he would, when a mature man, on a 
journey, dismount from his buggy and 
wade waist-deep in mire to rescue a pig 



Abraham Lincoln 33 

struggling in a swamp. Indeed, appeals to 
his compassion were so irresistible to him, 
and he felt it so difficult to refuse anything 
when his refusal could give pain, that he 
himself sometimes spoke of his inability to 
say "no " as a positive weakness. But that 
certainly does not prove that his compas- 
sionate feeling was confined to individual 
cases of suffering witnessed with his own 
eyes. As the boy was moved by the as- 
pect of the tortured wood turtle to com- 
pose an essay against cruelty to animals in 
general, so the aspect of other cases of suf- 
fering and wrong wrought up his moral 
nature, and set his mind to work against 
cruelty, injustice, and oppression in gen- 
eral. 

As his sympathy went forth to others, it 
attracted others to him. Especially those 
whom he called the "plain people" felt 
themselves drawn to him by the instinc- 
tive feeling that he understood, esteemed, 
and appreciated them. He had grown up 
among the poor, the lowly, the ignorant. 



34 Abraham Lincoln 

He never ceased to remember the good 
souls he had met among them, and the 
many kindnesses they had done him. Al- 
though in his mental development he had 
risen far above them, he never looked down 
upon them. How they felt and how they 
reasoned he knew, for so he had once felt 
and reasoned himself. How they could be 
moved he knew, for so he had once been 
moved himself and practiced moving oth- 
ers. His mind was much larger than 
theirs, but it thoroughly comprehended 
theirs ; and while he thought much farther 
than they, their thoughts were ever present 
to him. Nor had the visible distance be- 
tween them grown as wide as his rise in 
the world would seem to have warranted. 
Much of his backwoods speech and man- 
ners still clung to him. Although he had 
become " Mr. Lincoln " to his later ac- 
quaintances, he was still " Abe" to the 
" Nats " and " Billys " and " Daves " of his 
youth ; and their familiarity neither ap- 
peared unnatural to them, nor was it in 



Abraham Lincoln 35 

the least awkward to him. He still told 
and enjoyed stories similar to those he had 
told and enjoyed in the Indiana settlement 
and at New Salem. His wants remained 
as modest as they had ever been ; his do- 
mestic habits had by no means complete- 
ly accommodated themselves to those of 
his more highborn wife ; and though the 
" Kentucky jeans " apparel had long been 
dropped, his clothes of better material and 
better make would sit ill sorted on his gi- 
gantic limbs. His cotton umbrella, without 
a handle, and tied together with a coarse 
string to keep it from flapping, which he 
carried on his circuit rides, is said to be re- 
membered still by some of his surviving 
neighbors. This rusticity- of habit was ut- 
terly free from that affected contempt of 
refinement and comfort which self-made 
men sometimes carry into their more afflu- 
ent circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln 
it was entirely natural, and all those who 
came into contact with him knew it to be 
so. In his ways of thinking and feeling he 



36 Abraham Lincoln 

had become a gentleman in the highest 
sense, but the refining process had polished 
but little the outward form. The plain 
people, therefore, still considered "honest 
Abe Lincoln " one of themselves ; and 
when they felt, which they no doubt fre- 
quently did, that his thoughts and aspira- 
tions moved in a sphere above their own, 
they were all the more proud of him, with- 
out any diminution of fellow-feeling. It 
was this relation of mutual sympathy and 
understanding between Lincoln and the 
plain people that gave him his peculiar 
power as a public man, and singularly fitted 
him, as we shall see, for that , leadership 
which was preeminently required in the 
great crisis then coming on, — the leader- 
ship which indeed thinks and moves ahead 
of the masses, but always remains within 
sight and sympathetic touch of them. 

He entered upon the campaign of 1858 
better equipped than he had ever been be- 
fore. He not only instinctively felt, but he 
had convinced himself by arduous study, 



Abraham Lincoln 37 

that in this struggle against the spread of 
slavery he had right, justice, philosophy, 
the enlightened opinion of mankind, his- 
tory, the Constitution, and good policy on 
his side. It was observed that after he 
began to discuss the slavery question his 
speeches were pitched in a much loftier 
key than his former oratorical efforts. 
While he remained fond of telling funny 
stories in private conversation, they disap- 
peared more and more from his public dis- 
course. He would still now and then point 
his argument with expressions of inimita- 
ble quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly 
humor and witty irony ; but his general 
tone was serious, and rose sometimes to 
genuine solemnity. His masterly skill in 
dialectical thrust and parry, his wealth of 
knowledge, his power of reasoning and ele- 
vation of sentiment, disclosed in language 
of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not 
seldom astonished his old friends. 

Neither of the two champions could 
have found a more formidable antagonist 



38 Abraham Lincoln 

than each now met in the other. Douglas 
was by far the most conspicuous member 
of his party. His admirers had dubbed 
him "the little giant," contrasting in that 
nickname the greatness of his mind with 
the smallness of his body. But though of 
low stature, his broad-shouldered figure ap- 
peared uncommonly sturdy, and there was 
something lionlike in the squareness of his 
brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of 
his long hair. His loud and persistent ad- 
vocacy of territorial expansion, in the name 
of patriotism and " manifest destiny," had 
given him an enthusiastic following among 
the young and ardent. Great natural parts, 
a highly combative temperament, and long 
training had made him a debater unsur- 
passed in a Senate filled with able men. 
He could be as forceful in his appeals to 
patriotic feelings as he was fierce in de- 
nunciation and thoroughly skilled in all the 
baser tricks of parliamentary pugulism. 
While genial and rollicking in his social in- 
tercourse, — the idol of the "boys," — he 



Abraham Lincoln 39 

felt himself one of the most renowned 
statesmen of his time, and would fre- 
quently meet his opponents with an over- 
bearing haughtiness, as persons more to be 
pitied than to be feared. In his speech 
opening the campaign of 1858, he spoke 
of Lincoln, whom the Republicans had 
dared to advance as their candidate for 
" his " place in the Senate, with an air 
of patronizing if not contemptuous conde- 
scension, as " a kind, amiable, and intelli- 
gent gentleman and a good citizen." The 
little giant would have been pleased to pass 
off his antagonist as a tall dwarf. He 
knew Lincoln too well, however, to indulge 
himself seriously in such a delusion. But 
the political situation was at that moment 
in a curious tangle, and Douglas could ex- 
pect to derive from the confusion great 
advantage over his opponent. 

By the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, opening the Territories to the ingress 
of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South, 
but greatly alarmed the North. He had 



40 Abraham Lincoln 

sought to conciliate Northern sentiment 
by appending to his Kansas-Nebraska bill 
the declaration that its intent was " not to 
legislate slavery into any State or Terri- 
tory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to 
leave the people thereof perfectly free to 
form and regulate their institutions in their 
own way, subject only to the Constitution 
of the United States." This he called 
" the great principle of popular sover- 
eignty." When asked whether, under this 
act, the people of a Territory, before its 
admission as a State, would have the right 
to exclude slavery, he answered, " That is 
a question for the courts to decide." Then 
came the famous "Dred Scott decision," 
in which the Supreme Court held substan- 
tially that the right to hold slaves as prop- 
erty existed in the Territories by virtue of 
the Federal Constitution, and that this 
right could not be denied by any act of 
a territorial government. This, of course, 
denied the right of the people of any Ter- 
ritory to exclude slavery while they were 



Abraham Lincoln 41 

in a territorial condition, and it alarmed 
the Northern people still more. Douglas 
recognized the binding force of the deci- 
sion of the Supreme Court, at the same 
time maintaining, most illogically, that his 
great principle of popular sovereignty re- 
mained in force nevertheless. Meanwhile, 
the proslavery people of western Missouri, 
the so-called " border ruffians," had in- 
vaded Kansas, set up a constitutional con- 
vention, made a constitution of an extreme 
proslavery type, the " Lecompton Consti- 
tution," refused to submit it fairly to a vote 
of the people of Kansas, and then referred 
it to Congress for acceptance, — seeking 
thus to accomplish the admission of Kan- 
sas as a slave State. Had Douglas sup- 
ported such a scheme, he would have lost 
all foothold in the North. In the name of 
popular sovereignty he loudly declared his 
opposition to the acceptance of any consti- 
tution not sanctioned by a formal popular 
vote. He "did not care," he said, "whether 
slavery be voted up or down," but there 



42 Abraham Lincoln 

must be a fair vote of the people. Thus 
he drew upon himself the hostility of the 
Buchanan administration, which was con- 
trolled by the proslavery interest, but he 
saved his Northern following. More than 
this, not only did his Democratic admirers 
now call him " the true champion of free- 
dom," but even some Republicans of large 
influence, prominent among them Horace 
Greeley, sympathizing with Douglas in his 
fight against the Lecompton Constitution, 
and hoping to detach him permanently 
from the proslavery interest and to force 
a lasting breach in the Democratic party, 
seriously advised the Republicans of Illi- 
nois to give up their opposition to Douglas, 
and to help reelect him to the Senate. 
Lincoln was not of that opinion. He be- 
lieved that great popular movements can 
succeed only when guided by their faithful 
friends, and that the anti-slavery cause 
could not safely be entrusted to the keep- 
ing of one who " did not care whether 
slavery be voted up or down." This opin- 



Abraham Lincoln 43 

ion prevailed in Illinois ; but the influences 
within the Republican party, over which it 
prevailed, yielded only a reluctant acqui- 
escence, if they acquiesced at all, after 
having materially strengthened Douglas's 
position. Such was the situation of things 
when the campaign of 1858 between Lin- 
coln and Douglas began. 

Lincoln opened the campaign on his side 
at the convention which nominated him 
as the Republican candidate for the sena- 
torship, with a memorable saying which 
sounded like a shout from the watch-tower 
of history : " A house divided against it- 
self cannot stand. I believe this govern- 
ment cannot endure permanently half slave 
and half free. I do not expect the Union 
to be dissolved. I do not expect the house 
to fall, but I expect it will cease to be di- 
vided. It will become all one thing or all 
the other. Either the opponents of sla- 
very will arrest the further spread of it, and 
place it where the public mind shall rest in 
the belief that it is in the course of ulti- 



44 Abraham Lincoln 

mate extinction ; or its advocates will push 
it forward, till it shall become alike lawful 
in all the States, — old as well as new, 
North as well as South." Then he pro- 
ceeded to point out that the Nebraska doc- 
trine combined with the Dred Scott deci- 
sion worked in the direction of making the 
nation " all slave." Here was the " irre- 
pressible conflict " spoken of by Seward a 
short time later, in a speech made famous 
mainly by that phrase. If there was any 
new discovery in it, the right of priority 
was Lincoln's. This utterance proved not 
only his statesmanlike conception of the 
issue, but also, in his situation as a candi- 
date, the firmness of his moral courage. 
The friends to whom he had read the 
draught of this speech before he delivered 
it warned him anxiously that its delivery 
might be fatal to its success in the elec- 
tion. This was shrewd advice, in the or- 
dinary sense. While a slaveholder could 
threaten disunion with impunity, the mere 
suggestion that the existence of slavery was 



Abraham Lincoln 45 

incompatible with freedom in the Union 
would hazard the political chances of any 
public man in the North. But Lincoln 
was inflexible. " It is true," said he, " and 
I will deliver it as written. ... I would 
rather be defeated with these expressions 
in my speech held up and discussed before 
the people than be victorious without 
them." The statesman was right in his 
far-seeing judgment and his conscientious 
statement of the truth, but the practical 
politicians were also right in their predic- 
tion of the immediate effect. Douglas in- 
stantly seized upon the declaration that a 
house divided against itself cannot stand 
as the main objective point of his attack, 
interpreting it as an excitement to a " re- 
lentless sectional war," and there is no 
doubt that the persistent reiteration of this 
charge served to frighten not a few timid 
souls. 

Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring 
the moral and philosophical side of the 
subject to the foreground. " Slavery is 



46 Abraham Lincoln 

wrong " was the keynote of all his speeches. 
To Douglas's glittering sophism that the 
right of the people of a Territory to have 
slavery or not, as they might desire, was in 
accordance with the principle of true pop- 
ular sovereignty, he made the pointed an- 
swer : " Then true popular sovereignty, 
according to Senator Douglas, means that, 
when one man makes another man his 
slave, no third man shall be allowed to ob- 
ject." To Douglas's argument that the 
principle which demanded that the people 
of a Territory should be permitted to 
choose whether they would have slavery or 
not " originated when God made man, and 
placed good and evil before him, allowing 
him to choose upon his own responsibility," 
Lincoln solemnly replied : " No ; God did 
not place good and evil before man, telling 
him to make his choice. On the contrary, 
God did tell him there was one tree of the 
fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain 
of death." He did not, however, place 
himself on the most advanced ground taken 



Abraham Lincoln 47 

by the radical anti-slavery men. He ad- 
mitted that, under the Constitution, " the 
Southern people were entitled to a con- 
gressional fugitive slave law," although he 
did not approve the fugitive slave law then 
existing. He declared also that, if slavery 
were kept out of the Territories during 
their territorial existence, as it should be, 
and if then the people of any Territory, 
having a fair chance and a clear field, 
should do such an extraordinary thing as 
to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced 
by the actual presence of the institution 
among them, he saw no alternative but to 
admit such a Territory into the Union. 
He declared further that, while he should 
be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished 
in the District of Columbia, he should, as 
a member of Congress, with his present 
views, not endeavor to bring on that aboli- 
tion except on condition that emancipation 
be gradual, that it be approved by the de- 
cision of a majority of voters in the Dis- 
trict, and that compensation be made to 



48 Abraham Lincoln 

unwilling owners. On every available oc- 
casion, he pronounced himself in favor of 
the deportation and colonization of the 
blacks, of course with their consent. He 
repeatedly disavowed any wish on his part 
to have social and political equality estab- 
lished between whites and blacks. On this 
point he summed up his views in a reply 
to Douglas's assertion that the Declaration 
of Independence, in speaking of all men 
as being created equal, did not include the 
negroes, saying : " I do not understand the 
Declaration of Independence to mean that 
all men were created equal in all respects. 
They are not equal in color. But I believe 
that it does mean to declare that all men 
are equal in some respects ; they are equal 
in their right to life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness." 

With regard to some of these subjects 
Lincoln modified his position at a later 
period, and it has been suggested that he 
would have professed more advanced prin- 
ciples in his debates with Douglas, had he 



Abraham Lincoln 49 

not feared thereby to lose votes. This 
view can hardly be sustained. Lincoln 
had the courage of his opinions, but he 
was not a radical. The man who risked 
his election by delivering, against the ur- 
gent protest of his friends, the speech 
about " the house divided against itself " 
would not have shrunk from the expression 
of more extreme views, had he really en- 
tertained them. It is only fair to assume 
that he said what at the time he really 
thought, and that if* subsequently, his opin- 
ions changed, it was owing to new concep- 
tions of good policy and of duty brought 
forth by an entirely new set of circum- 
stances and exigencies. It is characteristic 
that he continued to adhere to the imprac- 
ticable colonization plan even after the 
Emancipation Proclamation had already 
been issued. 

But in this contest Lincoln proved him- 
self not only a debater, but also a political 
strategist of the first order. The "kind, 
amiable, and intelligent gentleman," as 



5<D Abraham Lincoln 

Douglas had been pleased to call him, was 
by no means as harmless as a dove. He 
possessed an uncommon share of that 
worldly shrewdness which not seldom goes 
with genuine simplicity of character ; and 
the political experience gathered in the 
legislature and in Congress, and in many 
election campaigns, added to his keen in- 
tuitions, had made him as far-sighted a 
judge of the probable effects of a public 
man's sayings or doings upon the popular 
mind, and as accurate a calculator in esti- 
mating political chances and forecasting 
results, as could be found among the party 
managers in Illinois. And now he perceived 
keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas 
found himself, between the Dred Scott 
decision, which declared the right to hold 
slaves to exist in the Territories by virtue 
of the Federal Constitution, and his "great 
principle of popular sovereignty," accord- 
ing to which the people of a Territory, if 
they saw fit, were to have the right to 
exclude slavery therefrom. Douglas was 



Abraham Lincoln 51 

twisting and squirming to the best of his 
ability to avoid the admission that the two 
were incompatible. The question then pre- 
sented itself if it would be good policy 
for Lincoln to force Douglas to a clear ex- 
pression of his opinion as to whether, the 
Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, "the 
people of a Territory could in any lawful 
way exclude slavery from its limits prior 
to the formation of a state constitution." 
Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Doug- 
las would answer : that slavery could not 
exist in a Territory unless the people de- 
sired it and gave it protection by territo- 
rial legislation. In an improvised caucus 
the policy of pressing the interrogatory on 
Douglas was discussed. Lincoln's friends 
unanimously advised against it, because 
the answer foreseen would sufficiently com- 
mend Douglas to the people of Illinois to 
insure his reelection to the Senate. But 
Lincoln persisted. " I am after larger 
game," said he. " If Douglas so answers, 
he can never be President, and the battle 



52 Abraham Lincoln 

of i860 is worth a hundred of this." The 
interrogatory was pressed upon Douglas, 
and Douglas did answer that, no matter 
what the decision of the Supreme Court 
might be on the abstract question, the peo- 
ple of a Territory had the lawful means to 
introduce or exclude slavery by territorial 
legislation friendly or unfriendly to the 
institution. Lincoln found it easy to show 
the absurdity of the proposition that, if 
slavery were admitted to exist of right in 
the Territories by virtue of the supreme 
law, the Federal Constitution, it could not 
be kept out or expelled by an inferior 
law, one made by a territorial legislature. 
Again the judgment of the politicians, 
having only the nearest object in view, 
proved correct : Douglas was reelected to 
the Senate. But Lincoln's judgment proved 
correct also : Douglas, by resorting to the 
expedient of his " unfriendly legislation 
doctrine," forfeited his last chance of be- 
coming President of the United States. 
He might have hoped to win, by sufficient 



Abraham Lincoln 53 

atonement, his pardon from the South for 
his opposition to the Lecompton Constitu- 
tion ; but that he taught the people of the 
Territories a trick by which they could de- 
feat what the pro-slavery men considered 
a constitutional right, and that he called 
that trick lawful, — this the slave power 
would never forgive. The breach between 
the Southern and the Northern democracy 
was thenceforth irremediable and fatal. 

The presidential election of i860 ap- 
proached. The struggle in Kansas, and 
the debates in Congress which accompa- 
nied it, and which not unfrequently pro- 
voked violent outbursts, continually stirred 
the popular excitement. Within the Dem- 
ocratic party raged the war of factions. 
The national Democratic convention met 
at Charleston on the 23d of April, i860. 
After a struggle of ten days between the 
adherents and the opponents of Douglas, 
during which the delegates from the cot- 
ton States had withdrawn, the convention 
adjourned without having nominated any 



54 Abraham Lincoln 

candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on 
the 1 8th of June. There was no prospect, 
however, of reconciling the hostile ele- 
ments. It appeared very probable that 
the Baltimore convention would nominate 
Douglas, while the seceding Southern 
Democrats would set up a candidate of 
their own, representing extreme pro-slavery 
principles. 

Meanwhile, the national Republican con- 
vention assembled at Chicago on the 16th 
of May, full of enthusiasm and hope. The 
situation was easily understood. The Dem- 
ocrats would have the South. In order to 
succeed in the election, the Republicans 
had to win, in addition to the States car- 
ried by Fremont in 1856, those that were 
classed as " doubtful," — New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, and Indiana, or Illinois in the 
place of either New Jersey or Indiana. 
The most eminent Republican statesmen 
and leaders of the time thought of for the 
presidency were Seward and Chase, both 
regarded as belonging to the more ad- 



Abraham Lincoln 55 

vanced order of anti-slavery men. Of the 
two, Seward had the largest following, main- 
ly from New York, New England, and the 
Northwest. Cautious politicians doubted 
seriously whether Seward, to whom some 
phrases in his speeches had undeservedly 
given the reputation of a reckless radi- 
cal, would be able to command the whole 
Republican vote in the doubtful States. 
Besides, during his long public career he 
had made enemies. It was evident that 
those who thought Seward's nomination too 
hazardous an experiment, would consider 
Chase unavailable for the same reason. 
They would then look round for an " avail- 
able " man; and among the "available" 
men Abraham Lincoln was easily discov- 
ered to stand foremost. His great debate 
with Douglas had given him a national 
reputation. The people of the East being 
eager to see the hero of so dramatic a con- 
test, he had been induced to visit several 
Eastern cities, and had astonished and de- 
lighted large and distinguished audiences 



56 Abraham Lincoln 

with speeches of singular power and ori- 
ginality. An address delivered by him in 
the Cooper Institute in New York, before 
an audience containing a large number of 
important persons, was then, and has ever 
since been, especially praised as one of 
the most logical and convincing political 
speeches ever made in this country. The 
people of the West had grown proud of 
him as a distinctively Western great man, 
and his popularity at home had some pecu- 
liar features which could be expected to 
exercise a potent charm. Nor was Lin- 
coln's name as that of an available candi- 
date left to the chance of accidental discov- 
ery. It is indeed not probable that he 
thought of himself as a presidential possi- 
bility, during his contest with Douglas for 
the senatorship. As late as April, 1859, 
he had written to a friend who had ap- 
proached him on the subject that he did 
not think himself fit for the presidency. 
The vice-presidency was then the limit of 
his ambition. But some of his friends in 



Abraham Lincoln 57 

Illinois took the matter seriously in hand, 
and Lincoln, after some hesitation, then 
formally authorized " the use of his name." 
The matter was managed with such energy 
and excellent judgment that, in the con- 
vention, he had not only the whole vote of 
Illinois to start with, but won votes on all 
sides without offending any rival. A large 
majority of the opponents of Seward went 
over to Abraham Lincoln, and gave him 
the nomination on the third ballot. As 
had been foreseen, Douglas was nominated 
by one wing of the Democratic party at 
Baltimore, while the extreme pro-slavery 
wing put Breckinridge into the field as its 
candidate. After a campaign conducted 
with the energy of genuine enthusiasm on 
the anti-slavery side the united Republicans 
defeated the divided Democrats, and Lin- 
coln was elected President by a majority of 
fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges. 

The result of the election had hardly 
been declared when the disunion move- 
ment in the South, long threatened and 



58 Abraham Lincohi 

carefully planned and prepared, broke out 
in the shape of open revolt, and nearly a 
month before Lincoln could be inaugurated 
as President of the United States seven 
Southern States had adopted ordinances 
of secession, formed an independent con- 
federacy, framed a constitution for it, and 
elected Jefferson Davis its president, ex- 
pecting the other slaveholding States soon 
to join them. On the nth of February, 
1 86 1, Lincoln left Springfield for Washing- 
ton ; having, with characteristic simplicity, 
asked his law partner not to change the 
sign of the firm " Lincoln and Herndon " 
during the four years' unavoidable absence 
of the senior partner, and having taken 
an affectionate and touching leave of his 
neighbors. 

The situation which confronted the new 
President was appalling : the larger part 
of the South in open rebellion, the rest of 
the slaveholding States wavering, prepar- 
ing to follow ; the revolt guided by deter- 
mined, daring, and skillful leaders ; the 



* 



Abraham Lincoln 59 

Southern people, apparently full of enthu- 
siasm and military spirit, rushing to arms, 
some of the forts and arsenals already in 
their possession ; the government of the 
Union, before the accession of the new- 
President, in the hands of men some of 
whom actively sympathized with the revolt, 
while others were hampered by their tra- 
ditional doctrines in dealing with it, and 
really gave it aid and comfort by their ir- 
resolute attitude ; all the departments full 
of " Southern sympathizers " and honey- 
combed with disloyalty ; the treasury emp- 
ty, and the public credit at the lowest ebb; 
the arsenals ill supplied with arms, if not 
emptied by treacherous practices ; the reg- 
ular army of insignificant strength, dis- 
persed over an immense surface, and de- 
prived of some of its best officers by defec- 
tion ; the navy small and antiquated. But 
that was not all. The threat of disunion 
had so often been resorted to by the slave 
power in years gone by that most North- 
ern people had ceased to believe in its 



60 Abraham Lincoln 

seriousness. But when disunion actually 
appeared as a stern reality, something like 
a chill swept through the whole Northern 
country. A cry for union and peace at any 
price rose on all sides. Democratic parti- 
sanship reiterated this cry with vociferous 
vehemence, and even many Republicans 
grew afraid of the victory they had just 
achieved at the ballot-box, and spoke of 
compromise. The country fairly resounded 
with the noise of " anti-coercion meetings." 
Expressions of firm resolution from deter- 
mined anti-slavery men were indeed not 
wanting, but they were for a while almost 
drowned by a bewildering confusion of dis- 
cordant voices. Even this was not all. Po- 
tent influences in Europe, with an ill-con- 
cealed desire for the permanent disruption 
of the American Union, eagerly espoused 
the cause of the Southern seceders, and 
the two principal maritime powers of the 
Old World seemed only to be waiting for a 
favorable opportunity to lend them a help- 
ing hand. 



Abraham Lincoln 61 



This was the state of things to be mas- 
tered by " honest Abe Lincoln " when he 
took his seat in the presidential chair, — 
'" honest Abe Lincoln," who was so good- 
natured that he could not say " no ; " the 
greatest achievement in whose life had 
been a debate on the slavery question; 
who had never been in any position of 
power ; who was without the slightest ex- 
perience of high executive duties, and who 
had only a speaking acquaintance with the 
men upon whose counsel and cooperation 
he was to depend. Nor was his accession 
to power under such circumstances greeted 
with general confidence even by the mem- 
bers of his party. While he had indeed 
won much popularity, many Republicans, 
especially among those who had advocated 
Seward's nomination for the presidency, 
saw the simple " Illinois lawyer " take the 
reins of government with a feeling little 
short of dismay. The orators and jour- 
nals of the opposition were ridiculing and 
lampooning him without measure. Many 



62 Abraham. Lincoln 

people actually wondered how such a man 
could dare to undertake a task which, as he 
himself had said to his neighbors in his 
parting speech, was "more difficult than 
that of Washington himself had been." 

But Lincoln brought to that task, aside 
from other uncommon qualities, the first 
requisite, — an intuitive comprehension of 
its nature. While he did not indulge in 
the delusion that the Union could be main- 
tained or restored without a conflict of 
arms, he could indeed not foresee all the 
problems he would have to solve. He in- 
stinctively understood, however, by what 
means that conflict would have to be con- 
ducted by the government of a democracy. 
He knew that the impending war, whether 
great or small, would not be like a foreign 
war, exciting a united national enthusiasm, 
but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon 
heat the animosities of party even in the 
localities controlled by the government ; 
that this war would have to be carried on, 
not by means of a ready-made machinery, 



Abraham Lincoln 63 

ruled by an undisputed, absolute will, but 
by means to be furnished by the voluntary 
action of the people : — armies to be formed 
by voluntary enlistment ; large sums of 
money to be raised by the people, through 
their representatives, voluntarily taxing 
themselves ; trusts of extraordinary power 
to be voluntarily granted ; and war mea- 
sures, not seldom restricting the rights and 
liberties to which the citizen was accus- 
tomed, to be voluntarily accepted and sub- 
mitted to by the people, or at least a large 
majority of them; — and that this would 
have to be kept up not merely during a 
short period of enthusiastic excitement, 
but possibly through weary years of alter- 
nating success and disaster, hope and de- 
spondency. He knew that in order to 
steer this government by public opinion 
successfully through all the confusion cre- 
ated by the prejudices and doubts and dif- 
ferences of sentiment distracting the pop- 
ular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire, 
mould, organize, unite, and guide the pop- 



64 Abraham Lincoln 

ular will that it might give forth all the 
means required for the performance of his 
great task, he would have to take into ac- 
count all the influences strongly affecting 
the current of popular thought and feeling, 
and to direct while appearing to obey. 

This was the kind of leadership he intui- 
tively conceived to be needed when a free 
people were to be led forward en masse 
to overcome a great common danger under 
circumstances of appalling difficulty, — the 
leadership which does not dash ahead with 
brilliant daring, no matter who follows, but 
which is intent upon rallying all the avail- 
able forces, gathering in the stragglers, 
closing up the column, so that the front 
may advance well supported. For this 
leadership Abraham Lincoln was admirably 
fitted, — better than any other American 
statesman of his day; for he understood 
the plain people, with all their loves and 
hates, their prejudices and their noble im- 
pulses, their weaknesses and their strength, 
as he understood himself, and his sympa- 



Abraham Lincoln 65 

thetic nature was apt to draw their sym- 
pathy to him. 

His inaugural address foreshadowed his 
official course in characteristic manner. 
Although yielding nothing in point of prin- 
ciple, it was by no means a flaming anti- 
slavery manifesto, such as would have 
pleased the more ardent Republicans. It 
was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing fa- 
ther speaking to his wayward children. In 
the kindliest language he pointed out to 
the secessionists how ill advised their at- 
tempt at disunion was, and why, for their 
own sakes, they should desist. Almost 
plaintively, he told them that, while it was 
not their duty to destroy the Union, it was 
his sworn duty to preserve it ; that the 
least he could do, under the obligations of 
his oath, was to possess and hold the pro- 
perty of the United States ; that he hoped 
to do this peaceably ; that he abhorred war 
for any purpose, and that they would have 
none unless they themselves were the ag- 
gressors. It was a masterpiece of persua- 



66 Abraham Lincoln 

siveness, and, while Lincoln had accepted 
many valuable amendments suggested by 
Seward, it was essentially his own. Prob- 
ably Lincoln himself did not expect his 
inaugural address to have any effect upon 
the secessionists, for he must have known 
them to be resolved upon disunion at any 
cost. But it was an appeal to the wavering 
minds in the North, and upon them it 
made a profound impression. Every can- 
did man, however timid and halting, had to 
admit that the President was bound by his 
oath to do his duty ; that under that oath 
he could do no less than he said he would 
do ; that if the secessionists resisted such 
an appeal as the President had made, they 
were bent upon mischief, and that the gov- 
ernment must be supported against them. 
The partisan sympathy with the South- 
ern insurrection which still existed in the 
North did indeed not disappear, but it di- 
minished perceptibly under the influence of 
such reasoning. Those who still resisted it 
did so at the risk of appearing unpatriotic. 



Abraham Lincoln 67 

It must not be supposed, however, that 
Lincoln at once succeeded in pleasing 
everybody, even among his friends, — even 
among those nearest to him. In selecting 
his cabinet, which he did substantially be- 
fore he left Springfield for Washington, he 
thought it wise to call to his assistance the 
strong men of his party, especially those 
who had given evidence of the support 
they commanded as his competitors in the 
Chicago convention. In them he found at 
the same time representatives of the differ- 
ent shades of opinion within the party, 
and of the different elements — former 
Whigs and former Democrats — from which 
the party had recruited itself. This was 
sound policy under the circumstances. It 
might indeed have been foreseen that 
among the members of a cabinet so com- 
posed, troublesome disagreements and ri- 
valries would break out. But it was better 
for the President to have these strong and 
ambitious men near him as his cooperators 
than to have them as his critics in Con- 



68 Abraham Lincoln 

gress, where their differences might have 
been composed in a common opposition to 
him. As members of his cabinet he could 
hope to control them, and to -keep them 
busily employed in the service of a com- 
mon purpose, if he had the strength to do 
so. Whether he did possess this strength 
was soon tested by a singularly rude trial. 

There can be no doubt that the fore- 
most members of his cabinet, Seward and 
Chase, the most eminent Republican states- 
men, had felt themselves wronged by their 
party when in its national convention it 
preferred to them for the presidency a 
man whom, not unnaturally, they thought 
greatly their inferior in ability and expe- 
rience as well as in service. The soreness 
of that disappointment was intensified 
when they saw this Western man in the 
White House, with so much of rustic man- 
ner and speech as still clung to him, meet- 
ing his fellow-citizens, high and low, on a 
footing of equality, with the simplicity of 
his good nature unburdened by any con- 



Abraham Lincoln 69 

ventional dignity of deportment, and deal- 
ing with the great business of state in an 
easy-going, unmethodical, and apparently 
somewhat irreverent way. They did not 
understand such a man. Especially Sew- 
ard, who, as Secretary of State, considered 
himself next to the Chief Executive, and 
who quickly accustomed himself to giving 
orders and making arrangements upon his 
own motion, thought it necessary that he 
should rescue the direction of public affairs 
from hands so unskilled, and take full 
charge of them himself. At the end of 
the first month of the administration he 
submitted a " memorandum " to President 
Lincoln, which has been first brought to 
light by Nicolay and Hay, and is one of 
their most valuable contributions to the 
history of those days. In that paper Sew- 
ard actually told the President that, at the 
end of a month's administration, the gov- 
ernment was still without a policy, either 
domestic or foreign ; that the slavery ques- 
tion should be eliminated from the struggle 



yo Abraham Lincoln 

about the Union ; that the matter of the 
maintenance of the forts and other posses- 
sions in the South should be decided with 
that view ; that explanations should be 
demanded categorically from the govern- 
ments of Spain and France, which were 
then preparing, one for the annexation of 
San Domingo, and both for the invasion of 
Mexico ; that if no satisfactory explana- 
tions were received war should be declared 
against Spain and France by the United 
States ; that explanations should also be 
sought from Russia and Great Britain, and 
a vigorous continental spirit of indepen- 
dence against European intervention be 
aroused all over the American continent ; 
that this policy should be incessantly pur- 
sued and directed by somebody ; that either 
the President should devote himself en- 
tirely to it, or devolve the direction on 
some member of his cabinet, whereupon 
all debate on this policy must end. 

This could be understood only as a 
formal demand that the President should 



Abraham Lincoln Ji 

acknowledge his own incompetency to per- 
form his duties, content himself with the 
amusement of distributing post offices, and 
resign his power as to all important affairs 
into the hands of his Secretary of State. 
It seems to-day incomprehensible how a 
statesman of Seward's calibre could at that 
period conceive a plan of policy in which 
the slavery question had no place ; a policy 
which rested upon the utterly delusive as- 
sumption that the secessionists, who had 
already formed their Southern Confederacy 
and were with stern resolution preparing 
to fight for its independence, could be 
hoodwinked back into the Union by some 
sentimental demonstration against Euro- 
pean interference ; a policy which, at that 
critical moment, would have involved the 
Union in a foreign war, thus inviting for- 
eign intervention in favor of the Southern 
Confederacy, and increasing tenfold its 
chances in the struggle for independence. 
But it is equally incomprehensible how 
Seward could fail to see that this demand 



Abraham Lincoln 



of an unconditional surrender was a mor- 
tal insult to the head of the government, 
and that by putting his proposition on pa- 
per he delivered himself into the hands of 
the very man he had insulted ; for, had Lin- 
coln, as most Presidents would have done, 
instantly dismissed Seward, and published 
the true reason for that dismissal, it would 
inevitably have been the end of Seward's 
career. But Lincoln did what not many of 
the noblest and greatest men in history 
would have been noble and great enough 
to do. He considered that Seward was still 
capable of rendering great service to his 
country in the place in which he was, if 
rightly controlled. He ignored the insult, 
but firmly established his superiority. In 
his reply, which he forthwith dispatched, 
he told Seward that the administration had 
a domestic policy as laid down in the inau- 
gural address with Seward's approval ; that 
it had a foreign policy as traced in Sew- 
ard's dispatches with the President's ap- 
proval ; that if any policy was to be main- 



Abraham Lincoln 73 



tained or changed, he, the President, was 
to direct that on his responsibility; and 
that in performing that duty the President 
had a right to the advice of his secretaries. 
Seward's fantastic schemes of foreign war 
and continental policies Lincoln brushed 
aside by passing them over in silence. 
Nothing more was said. Seward must 
have felt that he was at the mercy of a su- 
perior man ; that his offensive proposition 
had been generously pardoned as a tempo- 
rary aberration of a great mind, and that 
he could atone for it only by devoted per- 
sonal loyalty. This he did. He was thor- 
oughly subdued, and thenceforth submit- 
ted to Lincoln his dispatches for revision 
and amendment without a murmur. The 
war with European nations was no longer 
thought of ; the slavery question found in 
due time its proper place in the struggle 
for the Union ; and when, at a later period, 
the dismissal of Seward was demanded by 
dissatisfied Senators, who attributed to him 
the shortcomings of the administration, 



74 Abraham Lincoln 

Lincoln stood stoutly by his faithful Secre- 
tary of State. 

Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, a 
man of superb presence, of eminent ability 
and ardent patriotism, of great natural dig- 
nity and a certain outward coldness of 
manner, which made him appear more dif- 
ficult of approach than he really was, did 
not permit his disappointment to burst out 
in such extravagant demonstrations. But 
Lincoln's ways were so essentially differ- 
ent from his that they never became quite 
intelligible, and certainly not congenial to 
him. It might, perhaps, have been better 
had there been, at the beginning of the ad- 
ministration, some decided clash between 
Lincoln and Chase, as there was between 
Lincoln and Seward, to bring on a full mu- 
tual explanation, and to make Chase appre- 
ciate the real seriousness of Lincoln's na- 
ture. But, as it was, their relations always 
remained somewhat formal, and Chase 
never felt quite at ease under a chief whom 
he could not understand, and whose char- 



Abraham Lincoln 75 

acter and powers he never learned to es- 
teem at their true value. At the same 
time, he devoted himself zealously to the 
duties of his department, and did the coun- 
try arduous service under circumstances of 
extreme difficulty. Nobody recognized this 
more heartily than Lincoln himself, and 
they managed to work together until near 
the end of Lincoln's first presidential term, 
when Chase, after some disagreements 
concerning appointments to office, resigned 
from the treasury ; and, after Taney's 
death, the President made him Chief Jus- 
tice. 

JThe rest of the cabinet consisted of men 
of less eminence, who subordinated them- 
selves more easily. In January, 1862, Lin- 
coln found it necessary to bow Cameron 
out of the war office, and to put in his place 
Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely 
practical mind, vehement impulses, fierce 
positiveness, ruthless energy, immense 
working power, lofty patriotism, and sever- 
est devotion to duty. He accepted the war 



7 6 Abraham Lincoln 

office, not as a partisan, for he had never 
been a Republican, but only to do all he 
could in "helping to save the country." 
The manner in which Lincoln succeeded 
in taming this lion to his will, by frankly 
recognizing his great qualities, by giving 
him the most generous confidence, by aid- 
ing him in his work to the full of his power, 
by kindly concession or affectionate per- 
suasiveness in cases of differing opinions, 
or, when it was necessary, by firm asser- 
tions of superior authority, bears the high- 
est testimony to his skill in the manage- 
ment of men. Stanton, who had entered 
the service with rather a mean opinion of 
Lincoln's character and capacity, became 
one of his warmest, most devoted, and 
most admiring friends, and with none of 
his secretaries was Lincoln's intercourse 
more intimate. To take advice with can- 
did readiness, and to weigh it without any 
pride of his own opinion, was one of Lin- 
coln's preeminent virtues ; but he had not 
long presided over his cabinet council when 



Abraham Lincoln 77 

his was felt by all its members to be the 
ruling mind. 

The cautious policy foreshadowed in his 
inaugural address, and pursued during the 
first period of the civil war, was far from 
satisfying all his party friends. The ardent 
spirits among the Union men thought that 
the whole North should at once be called 
to arms, to crush the rebellion by one 
powerful blow. The ardent spirits among 
the anti-slavery men insisted that, slavery 
having brought forth the rebellion, this 
powerful blow should at once be aimed at 
slavery. Both complained that the admin- 
istration was spiritless, undecided, and la- 
mentably slow in its proceedings. Lincoln 
reasoned otherwise. The ways of thinking 
and feeling of the masses, of the plain peo- 
ple, were constantly present to his mind. 
The masses, the plain people, had to fur- 
nish the men for the fighting, if fighting 
was to be done. He believed that the plain 
people would be ready to fight when it 
clearly appeared necessary, and that they 



7 8 Abraham Lincoln 

would feel that necessity when they felt 
themselves attacked. He therefore waited 
until the enemies of the Union struck the 
first blow. As soon as, on the 12th of 
April, 1 86 1, the first gun was fired in 
Charleston harbor on the Union flag upon 
Fort Sumter, the call was sounded, and the 
Northern people rushed to arms. 

Lincoln knew that the plain people were 
now indeed ready to fight in defense of the 
Union, but not yet ready to fight for the 
destruction of slavery. He declared openly 
that he had a right to summon the people 
to fight for the Union, but not to summon 
them to fight for the abolition of slavery 
as a primary object; and this declaration 
gave him numberless soldiers for the Union 
who at that period would have hesitated to 
do battle against the institution of slavery. 
For a time he succeeded in rendering harm- 
less the cry of the partisan opposition that 
the Republican administration were per- 
verting the war for the Union into an 
"abolition war." But when he went so 



Abraham Lincoln 79 

far as to countermand the acts of some 
generals in the field, looking to the eman- 
cipation of the slaves in the districts cov- 
ered by their commands, loud complaints 
arose from earnest anti-slavery men, who 
accused the President of turning his back 
upon the anti-slavery cause. Many of these 
anti-slavery men will now, after a calm re- 
trospect, be willing to admit that it would 
have been a hazardous policy to endan- 
ger, by precipitating a demonstrative fight 
against slavery, the success of the strug- 
gle for the Union. 

Lincoln's views and feelings concerning 
slavery had not changed. Those who con- 
versed with him intimately upon the sub- 
ject at that period know that he did not 
expect slavery long to survive the triumph 
of the Union, even if it were not immedi- 
ately destroyed by the war. In this he was 
right. Had the Union armies achieved a 
decisive victory in an early period of the 
conflict, and had the seceded States been 
received back with slavery, the " slave 



80 Abraham Lincoln 

power " would then have been a defeated 
power, — defeated in an attempt to carry 
out its most effective threat. It would 
have lost its prestige. Its menaces would 
have been hollow sound, and ceased to 
make any one afraid. It could no longer 
have hoped to expand, to maintain an equi- 
librium in any branch of Congress, and to 
control the government. The victorious 
free States would have largely overbal- 
anced it. It would no longer have been 
able to withstand the onset of a hostile 
age. It could no longer have ruled, — and 
slavery had to rule in order to live. It 
would have lingered for a while, but it 
would surely have been " in the course of 
ultimate extinction." A prolonged war 
precipitated the destruction of slavery ; a 
short war might only have prolonged its 
death struggle. Lincoln saw this clearly ; 
but he saw also that, in a protracted death 
struggle, it might still have kept disloyal 
sentiments alive, bred distracting commo- 
tions, and caused great mischief to the 



Abraham Lincoln 8 1 

country. He therefore hoped that slavery- 
would not survive the war. 

But the question how he could rightfully 
employ his power to bring on its speedy 
destruction was to him not a question of 
mere sentiment. He himself set forth his 
reasoning upon it, at a later period, in one 
of his inimitable letters. "I am naturally 
anti-slavery," said he. " If slavery is not 
wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remem- 
ber the time when I did not so think and 
feel. And yet I have never understood 
that the presidency conferred upon me an 
unrestricted right to act upon that judg- 
ment and feeling. It was in the oath I 
took that I would, to the best of my abil- 
ity, preserve, protect, and defend the Con- 
stitution of the United States. I could 
not take the office without taking the oath. 
Nor was it my view that I might take 
an oath to get power, and break the oath 
in using that power. I understood, too, 
that, in ordinary civil administration, this 
oath even forbade me practically to indulge 



82 Abraham Lincoln 

my private abstract judgment on the moral 
question of slavery. I did understand, 
however, also, that my oath imposed upon 
me the duty of preserving, to the best of 
my ability, by every indispensable means, 
that government, that nation, of which the 
Constitution was the organic law. I could 
not feel that, to the best of my ability, I 
had even tried to preserve the Constitution 
if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I 
should permit the wreck of government, 
country, and Constitution all together." 
In other words, if the salvation of the gov- 
ernment, the Constitution, and the Union 
demanded the destruction of slavery, he 
felt it to be not only his right, but his 
sworn duty to destroy it. Its destruction 
became a necessity of the war for the 
Union. 

As the war dragged on and disaster fol- 
lowed disaster, the sense of that necessity 
steadily grew upon him. Early in 1862, as 
some of his friends well remember, he saw, 
what Seward seemed not to see, that to 



Abraham Lincoln 83 

give the war for the Union an anti-slavery 
character was the surest means to prevent 
the recognition of the Southern Confeder- 
acy as an independent nation by European 
powers ; that, slavery being abhorred by 
the moral sense of civilized mankind, no 
European government would dare to offer 
so gross an insult to the public opinion of 
its people as openly to favor the creation 
of a state founded upon slavery to the pre- 
judice of an existing nation fighting against 
slavery. He saw also that slavery un- 
touched was to the rebellion an element of 
power, and that in order to overcome that 
power it was necessary to turn it into 
an element of weakness. Still, he felt 
no assurance that the plain people were 
prepared for so radical a measure as 
the emancipation of the slaves by act of 
the government, and he anxiously consid- 
ered that, if they were not, this great step 
might, by exciting dissension at the North, 
injure the cause of the Union in one quar- 
ter more than it would help it in another. 



84 Abraham Lincoln 

He heartily welcomed an effort made in 
New York to mould and stimulate public 
sentiment on the slavery question by pub- 
lic meetings boldly pronouncing for emanci- 
pation. At the same time he himself cau- 
tiously advanced with a recommendation, 
expressed in a special message to Congress, 
that the Unitecl States should cooperate 
with any State which might adopt the 
gradual abolishment of slavery, giving such 
State pecuniary aid to compensate the 
former owners of emancipated slaves. The 
discussion was started, and spread rapidly. 
Congress adopted the resolution recom- 
mended, and soon went a step farther in 
passing a bill to abolish slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. The plain people began 
to look at emancipation on a larger scale, 
as a thing to be considered seriously by pa- 
triotic citizens ; and soon Lincoln thought 
that the time was ripe, and that the edict 
of freedom could be ventured upon without 
danger of serious confusion in the Union 
ranks. 



Abraham Lincoln 85 

The failure of McClellan's movement 
upon Richmond increased immensely the 
prestige of the enemy. The need of some 
great act to stimulate the vitality of the 
Union cause seemed to grow daily more 
pressing. On July 21, 1862, Lincoln sur- 
prised his cabinet with the draught of a 
proclamation declaring free the slaves in 
all the States that should be still in rebel- 
lion against the United States on the 1st 
of January, 1863. As to the matter itself 
he announced that he had fully made up 
his mind ; he invited advice only concern- 
ing the form and the time of publication. 
Seward suggested that the proclamation, 
if then brought out, amidst disaster and 
distress, would sound like the last shriek 
of a perishing cause. Lincoln accepted 
the suggestion, and the proclamation was 
postponed. Another defeat followed, the 
second at Bull Run. But when, after that 
battle, the Confederate army, under Lee, 
crossed the Potomac and invaded Mary- 
land, Lincoln vowed in his heart that, if 



86 Abraham Lincoln 

the Union army were now blessed with 
success, the decree of freedom should 
surely be issued. The victory of Antietam 
was won on September 17, and the pre- 
liminary Emancipation Proclamation came 
forth on the 22d. It was Lincoln's own 
resolution and act ; but practically it bound 
the nation, and permitted no step back- 
ward. In spite of its limitations, it was 
the actual abolition of slavery. Thus he 
wrote his name upon the books of history 
with the title dearest to his heart, — the 
liberator of the slave. 

It is true, the great proclamation, which 
stamped the war as one for "union and 
freedom," did not at once mark the turn- 
ing of the tide on the field of military 
operations. There were more disasters, — 
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. But 
with Gettysburg and Vicksburg the whole 
aspect of the war changed. Step by step, 
now more slowly, then more rapidly, but 
with increasing steadiness, the flag of the 
Union advanced from field to field toward 



Abraham Lincoln 87 

the final consummation. The decree of 
emancipation was naturally followed by the 
enlistment of emancipated negroes in the 
Union armies. This measure had a far- 
ther reaching effect than merely giving 
the Union armies an increased supply of 
men. The laboring force of the rebellion 
was hopelessly disorganized. The war be- 
came like a problem of arithmetic. As 
the Union armies pushed forward, the area 
from which the Southern Confederacy 
could draw recruits and supplies constantly 
grew smaller, while the area from which 
the Union recruited its strength constantly 
grew larger ; and everywhere, even within 
the Southern lines, the Union had its al- 
lies. The fate of the rebellion was then 
virtually decided ; but it still required 
much bloody work to convince the brave 
warriors who fought for it that they were 
really beaten. 

Neither did the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion forthwith command universal assent 
among the people who were loyal to the 



88 Abraham Lincoln 

Union. There were even signs of a reac- 
tion against the administration in the fall 
elections of 1862, seemingly justifying the 
opinion, entertained by many, that the 
President had really anticipated the devel- 
opment of popular feeling. The cry that 
the war for the Union had been turned 
into an " abolition war " was raised again 
by the opposition, and more loudly than 
ever. But the good sense and patriotic in- 
stincts of the plain people gradually mar- 
shaled themselves on Lincoln's side, and 
he lost no opportunity to help on this pro- 
cess by personal argument and admoni- 
tion. There never has been a President in 
such constant and active contact with the 
public opinion of the country, as there 
never has been a President who, while at 
the head of the government, remained so 
near to the people. Beyond the circle of 
those who had long known him, the feeling 
steadily grew that the man in the White 
House was " honest Abe Lincoln " still, 
and that every citizen might approach him 



Abraham Lincoln 89 

with complaint, expostulation, or advice, 
without danger of meeting a rebuff from 
power-proud authority, or humiliating con- 
descension ; and this privilege was used by 
so many and with such unsparing freedom 
that only superhuman patience could have 
endured it all. There are men now living 
who would to-day read with amazement, if 
not regret, what they then ventured to say 
or write to him. But Lincoln repelled no 
one whom he believed to speak to him in 
good faith and with patriotic purpose. No 
good advice would go unheeded. No can- 
did criticism would offend him. No hon- 
est opposition, while it might pain him, 
would produce a lasting alienation of feel- 
ing between him and the opponent. It 
may truly be said that few men in power 
have ever been exposed to more daring 
attempts to direct their course, to severer 
censure of their acts, and to more cruel mis- 
representation of their motives. And all 
this he met with that good-natured humor 
peculiarly his own, and with untiring effort 



90 Abraham Lincoln 

to see the right and to impress it upon 
those who differed from him. The conver- 
sations he had and the correspondence 
he carried on upon matters of public inter- 
est, not only with men in official position, 
but with private citizens, were almost un- 
ceasing, and in a large number of public 
letters, written ostensibly to meetings, or 
committees, or persons of importance, he 
addressed himself directly to the popular 
mind. Most of these letters stand among 
the finest monuments of our political lit- 
erature. Thus he presented the singular 
spectacle of a President who, in the midst 
of a great civil war, with unprecedented 
duties weighing upon him, was constantly 
in person debating the great features of 
his policy with the people. 

While in this manner he exercised an 
ever-increasing influence upon the popular 
understanding, his sympathetic nature en- 
deared him more and more to the popular 
heart. In vain did journals and speakers 
of the opposition represent him as a light- 



Abraham Lincoln 9 1 



minded trifler, who amused himself with 
frivolous story - telling and coarse jokes, 
while the blood of the people was flowing 
in streams. The people knew that the 
man at the head of affairs, on whose hag- 
gard face the twinkle of humor so fre- 
quently changed into an expression of pro- 
foundest sadness, was more than any other 
deeply distressed by the suffering he wit- 
nessed; that he felt the pain of every 
wound that was inflicted on the battlefield, 
and the anguish of every woman or child 
who had lost husband or father ; that when- 
ever he could he was eager to alleviate sor- 
row, and that his mercy was never implored 
in vain. They looked to him as one who 
was with them and of them in all their 
hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, — 
who laughed with them and wept with 
them ; and as his heart was theirs, so their 
hearts turned to him. His popularity was 
far different from that of Washington, who 
was revered with awe, or that of Jackson, 
the unconquerable hero, for whom party 



92 Abraham Lincoln 

enthusiasm never grew weary of shouting. 
To Abraham Lincoln the people became 
bound by a genuine sentimental attach- 
ment. It was not a matter of respect, or 
confidence, or party pride, for this feeling 
spread far beyond the boundary lines of 
his party ; it was an affair of the heart, in- 
dependent of mere reasoning. When the 
soldiers in the field or their folks at home 
spoke of " Father Abraham," there was no 
cant in it. They felt that their President 
was really caring for them as a father 
would, and that they could go to him, every 
one of them, as they would go to a father, 
and talk to him of what troubled them, 
sure to find a willing ear and tender sym- 
pathy. Thus, their President, and his 
cause, and his endeavors, and his success 
gradually became to them almost matters 
of family concern. And this popularity 
carried him triumphantly through the pre- 
sidential election of 1864, in spite of an 
opposition within his own party which at 
first seemed very formidable. 



Abraham Lincoln 93 

Many of the radical anti-slavery men 
were never quite satisfied with Lincoln's 
ways of meeting the problems of the time. 
They were very earnest and mostly very 
able men, who had positive ideas as to 
" how this rebellion should be put down." 
They would not recognize the necessity of 
measuring the steps of the government 
according to the progress of opinion among 
the plain people. They criticised Lincoln's 
cautious management as irresolute, halt- 
ing, lacking in definite purpose and in en- 
ergy ; he should not have delayed emanci- 
pation so long; he should not have confided 
important commands to men of doubtful 
views as to slavery ; he should have au- 
thorized military commanders to set the 
slaves free as they went on ; he dealt too 
leniently with unsuccessful generals ; he 
should have put down all factious opposi- 
tion with a strong hand instead of trying 
to pacify it ; he should have given the peo- 
ple accomplished facts instead of arguing 
with them, and so on. It is true, these 



94 Abraham Lincoln 

criticisms were not always entirely un- 
founded. Lincoln's policy had, with the 
virtues of democratic government, some of 
its weaknesses, which in the presence of 
pressing exigencies were apt to deprive 
governmental action of the necessary vigor ; 
and his kindness of heart, his disposition 
always to respect the feelings of others, 
frequently made him recoil from anything 
like severity, even when severity was ur- 
gently called for. But many of his radical 
critics have since then revised their judg- 
ment sufficiently to admit that Lincoln's 
policy was, on the whole, the wisest and 
safest ; that a policy of heroic methods, 
while it has sometimes accomplished great 
results, could in a democracy like ours be 
maintained only by constant success ; that 
it would have quickly broken down under 
the weight of disaster ; that it might have 
been successful from the start, had the 
Union, at the beginning of the conflict, 
had its Grants and Shermans and Sheri- 
dans, its Farraguts and Porters, fully ma- 



Abraham Lincoln 95 

tured at the head of its forces ; but that, 
as the great commanders had to be evolved 
slowly from the developments of the war, 
constant success could not be counted 
upon, and it was best to follow a policy 
which was in friendly contact with the 
popular force, and therefore more fit to 
stand the trial of misfortune on the battle- 
field. But at that period they thought dif- 
ferently, and their dissatisfaction with Lin- 
coln's doing was greatly increased by the 
steps he took toward the reconstruction of 
rebel States then partially in possession of 
the Union forces. 

In December, 1863, Lincoln issued an- 
amnesty proclamation, offering pardon to 
all implicated in the rebellion, with certain 
specified exceptions, on condition of their 
taking and maintaining an oath to support 
the Constitution and obey the laws of the 
United States and the proclamations of the 
President with regard to slaves ; and also 
promising that when, in any of the rebel 
States, a number of citizens equal to one 



g6 Abraham Lincoln 

tenth of the voters in i860 should reestab- 
lish a state government in conformity with 
the oath above mentioned, such should be 
recognized by the Executive as the true 
government of the State. The proclamation 
seemed at first to be received with general 
favor. But soon another scheme of recon- 
struction, much more stringent in its pro- 
visions, was put forward in the House of 
Representatives by Henry Winter Davis. 
Benjamin Wade championed it in the Sen- 
ate. It passed in the closing moments of 
the session in July, 1864, and Lincoln, in- 
stead of making it a law by his signature, 
embodied the text of it in a proclamation 
as a plan of reconstruction worthy of being 
earnestly considered. The differences of 
opinion concerning this subject had only 
intensified the feeling against Lincoln 
which had long been nursed among the 
radicals, and some of them openly declared 
their purpose of resisting his reelection to 
the presidency. Similar sentiments were 
manifested by the advanced anti-slavery 



Abraham Lincoln 97 



men of Missouri, who, in their hot faction- 
fight with the "conservatives" of that 
State, had not received from Lincoln the 
active support they demanded. Still an- 
other class of Union men, mainly in the 
East, gravely shook their heads when con- 
sidering the question whether Lincoln 
should be reelected. They were those who 
cherished in their minds an ideal of states- 
manship and of personal bearing in high 
office with which, in their opinion, Lin- 
coln's individuality was much out of ac- 
cord. They were shocked when they heard 
him cap an argument upon grave affairs 
of state with a story about -a man out in 
Sangamon County," -a story, to be sure, 
strikingly clinching his point, but sadly 
lacking in dignity. They could not under- 
stand the man who was capable, in opening 
a cabinet meeting, of reading to his secre- 
taries a funny chapter from a recent book 
of Artemus Ward, with which in an un- 
occupied moment he had relieved his care- 
burdened mind, and who then solemnly in- 



g8 Abraham Lincoln 

formed the executive council that he had 
vowed in his heart to issue a proclamation 
emancipating the slaves as soon as God 
blessed the Union arms with another vic- 
tory. They were alarmed at the weakness 
of a President who would indeed resist the 
urgent remonstrances of statesmen against 
his policy, but could not resist the prayer 
of an old woman for the pardon of a sol- 
dier who was sentenced to be shot for 
desertion. Such men, mostly sincere and 
ardent patriots, not only wished, but ear- 
nestly set to work, to prevent Lincoln's re- 
nomination. Not a few of them actually 
believed, in 1863, that, if the national con- 
vention of the Union party were held then, 
Lincoln would not be supported by the 
delegation of a single State. But when 
the convention met at Baltimore, in June, 
1864, the voice of the people was heard. 
On the first ballot Lincoln received the 
votes of the delegations from all the States 
except Missouri ; and even the Missourians 
turned over their votes to him before the 
result of the ballot was declared. 



Abraham Lincoln 99 

But even after his renomination the op- 
position to Lincoln within the ranks of the 
Union party did not subside. A conven- 
tion, called by the dissatisfied radicals in 
Missouri, and favored by men of a similar 
way of thinking in other States, had been 
held already in May, and had nominated as 
its candidate for the presidency General 
Fremont. He, indeed, did not attract a 
strong following, but opposition movements 
from different quarters appeared more 
formidable. Henry Winter Davis and 
Benjamin Wade assailed Lincoln in a flam- 
ing manifesto. Other Union men, of un- 
doubted patriotism and high standing, per- 
suaded themselves, and sought to persuade 
the people, that Lincoln's renomination 
was ill advised and dangerous to the Union 
cause. As the Democrats had put off their 
convention until the 29th of August, the 
Union party had, during the larger part of 
the summer, no opposing candidate and 
platform to attack, and the political cam- 
paign languished. Neither were the tid- 



ioo Abraham Lincoln 

ings from the theatre of war of a cheer- 
ing character. The terrible losses suffered 
by Grant's army in the battles of the Wil- 
derness spread general gloom. Sherman 
seemed for a while to be in a precarious 
position before Atlanta. The opposition 
to Lincoln within the Union party grew 
louder in its complaints and discourag- 
ing predictions. Earnest demands were 
heard that his candidacy should be with- 
drawn. Lincoln himself, not knowing how 
strongly the masses were attached to him, 
was haunted by dark forebodings of de- 
feat. Then the scene suddenly changed 
as if by magic. The Democrats, in their 
national convention, declared the war a 
failure, demanded, substantially, peace at 
any price, and nominated on such a plat- 
form General McClellan as their candidate. 
Their convention had hardly adjourned 
when the capture of Atlanta gave a new 
aspect to the military situation. It was 
like a sun-ray bursting through a dark 
cloud. The rank and file of the Union 



Abraham Lincoln ioi 

party rose with rapidly growing enthusi- 
asm. The song " We are coming, Father 
Abraham, three hundred thousand strong," 
resounded all over the land. Long before 
the decisive day arrived, the result was be- 
yond doubt, and Lincoln was reelected 
President by overwhelming majorities. 
The election over, even his severest critics 
found themselves forced to admit that Lin- 
coln was the only possible candidate for 
the Union party in 1864, and that nei- 
ther political combinations nor campaign 
speeches, nor even victories in the field, 
were needed to insure his success. The 
plain people had all the while been satisfied 
with Abraham Lincoln : they confided in 
him ; they loved him ; they felt themselves 
near to him ; they saw personified in him 
the cause of Union and freedom ; and they 
went to the ballot-box for him in their 
strength. 

The hour of triumph called out the char- 
acteristic impulses of his nature. The op- 
position within the Union party had stung 



102 Abraham Lincoln 

him to the quick. Now he had his oppo- 
nents before him, baffled and humiliated. 
Not a moment did he lose to stretch out 
the hand of friendship to all. " Now that 
the election is over," he said, in response 
to a serenade, " may not all, having a com- 
mon interest, reunite in a common effort to 
save our common country ? For my own 
part, I have striven, and will strive, to place 
no obstacle in the way. So long as I have 
been here I have not willingly planted a 
thorn in any man's bosom. While I am 
deeply sensible to the high compliment of 
a reelection, it adds nothing to my satis- 
faction that any other man may be pained 
or disappointed by the result. May I ask 
those who were with me to join with me 
in the same spirit toward those who were 
against me ? " This was Abraham Lin- 
coln's character as tested in the furnace of 
prosperity. 

The war was virtually decided, but not 
yet ended. Sherman was irresistibly car- 
rying the Union flag through the South. 



Abraham Lincoln 103 



Grant had his iron hand upon the ramparts 
of Richmond. The days of the Confeder- 
acy were evidently numbered. Only the 
last blow remained to be struck. Then 
Lincoln's second inauguration came, and 
with it his second inaugural address. Lin- 
coln's famous "Gettysburg speech" has 
been much and justly admired. But far 
greater, as well as far more characteristic, 
was that inaugural in which he poured out 
the whole devotion and tenderness of his 
great soul. It had all the solemnity of a 
father's last admonition and blessing to his 
children before he lay down to die. These 
were its closing words : " Fondly do we 
hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away. Yet if God wills that it continue 
until all the wealth piled up by the bond- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
paid by another drawn with the sword, as 
was said three thousand years ago, so still 



104 Abraham Lincoln 

it must be said, ' The judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether.' 
With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives 
us to see the right, let us strive to finish 
the work we are in ; to bind up the na- 
tion's wounds ; to care for him who shall 
have borne the battle, and for his widow 
and his orphan ; to do all which may- 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all na- 
tions." 

This was like a sacred poem. No Ameri- 
can President had ever spoken words like 
these to the American people. America 
never had a President who found such 
words in the depth of his heart. 

Now followed the closing scenes of the 
war. The Southern armies fought bravely 
to the last, but all in vain. Richmond fell. 
Lincoln himself entered the city on foot, 
accompanied only by a few officers and 
a squad of sailors who had rowed him 
ashore from the flotilla in the James River, 



Abraham Lincoln 105 

a negro picked up on the way serving as a 
guide. Never had the world seen a more 
modest conqueror and a more characteristic 
triumphal procession, — no army with ban- 
ners and drums, only a throng of those 
who had been slaves, hastily run together, 
escorting the victorious chief into the capi- 
tal of the vanquished foe. We are told 
that they pressed around him, kissed his 
hands and his garments, and shouted and 
danced for joy, while tears ran down the 
President's care-furrowed cheeks. 

A few days more brought the surren- 
der of Lee's army, and peace was assured. 
The people of the North were wild with 
joy. Everywhere festive guns were boom- 
ing, bells pealing, the churches ringing 
with thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes 
thronging the thoroughfares, when sud- 
denly the news flashed over the land that 
Abraham Lincoln had been murdered. 
The people were stunned by the blow. 
Then a wail of sorrow went up such as 
America had never heard before. Thou- 



106 Abraham Lincoln 

sands of Northern households grieved as if 
they had lost their dearest member. Many 
a Southern man cried out in his heart that 
his people had been robbed of their best 
friend in their humiliation and distress, 
when Abraham Lincoln was struck down. 
It was as if the tender affection which his 
countrymen bore him had inspired all na- 
tions with a common sentiment. All civi- 
lized mankind stood mourning around the 
coffin of the dead President. Many of 
those, here and abroad, who not long be- 
fore had ridiculed and reviled him were 
among the first to hasten on with their 
flowers of eulogy, and in that universal 
chorus of lamentation and praise there was 
not a voice that did not tremble with gen- 
uine emotion. Never since Washington's 
death had there been such unanimity of 
judgment as to a man's virtues and great- 
ness ; and even Washington's death, al- 
though his name was held in greater rever- 
ence, did not touch so sympathetic a chord 
in the people's hearts. 



Abraham Lincoln 107 

Nor can it be said that this was owing 
to the tragic character of Lincoln's end. It 
is true, the death of this gentlest and most 
merciful of rulers by the hand of a mad 
fanatic was well apt to exalt him beyond 
his merits in the estimation of those who 
loved him, and to make his renown the ob- 
ject of peculiarly tender solicitude. But it 
is also true that the verdict pronounced 
upon him in those days has been affected 
little by time, and that historical inquiry 
has served rather to increase than to lessen 
the appreciation of his virtues, his abilities, 
his services. Giving the fullest measure 
of credit to his great ministers, — to Sew- 
ard for his conduct of foreign affairs, to 
Chase for the management of the finances 
under terrible difficulties, to Stanton for 
the performance of his tremendous task 
as war secretary, — and readily acknow- 
ledging that without the skill and fortitude 
of the great commanders, and the heroism 
of the soldiers and sailors under them, suc- 
cess could not have been achieved, the his- 



io8 Abraham Lincoln 

torian still finds that Lincoln's judgment 
and will were by no means governed by 
those around him ; that the most impor- 
tant steps were owing to his initiative ; that 
his was the deciding and directing mind ; 
and that it was preeminently he whose sa- 
gacity and whose character enlisted for the 
administration in its struggles the counte- 
nance, the sympathy, and the support of 
the people. It is found, even, that his 
judgment on military matters was aston- 
ishingly acute, and that the advice and 
instructions he gave to the generals com- 
manding in the field would not seldom 
have done honor to the ablest of them. 
History, therefore, without overlooking, or 
palliating, or excusing any of his short- 
comings or mistakes, continues to place 
him foremost among the saviours of the 
Union and the liberators of the slave. 
More than that, it awards to him the merit 
of having accomplished what but few polit- 
ical philosophers would have recognized as 
possible, — of leading the republic through 



Abraham Lincoln 109 



four years of furious civil conflict without 
any serious detriment to its free institu- 
tions. 

He was, indeed, while President, vio- 
lently denounced by the opposition as a 
tyrant and a usurper, for having gone be- 
yond his constitutional powers in author- 
izing or permitting the temporary sup- 
pression of newspapers, and in wantonly 
suspending the writ of habeas corpus and 
resorting to arbitrary arrests. Nobody 
should be blamed who, when such things 
are done, in good faith and from patriotic 
motives protests against them. In a repub- 
lic, arbitrary stretches of power, even when 
demanded by necessity, should never be 
permitted to pass without a protest on the 
one hand, and without an apology on the 
other. It is well they did not so pass dur- 
ing our civil war. That arbitrary measures 
were resorted to is true. That they were 
resorted to most sparingly, and only when 
the government thought them absolutely 
required by the safety of the republic, will 



no Abraham Lincoln 

now hardly be denied. But certain it is 
that the history of the world does not fur- 
nish a single example of a government 
passing through so tremendous a crisis as 
our civil war was with so small a record of 
arbitrary acts, and so little interference 
with the ordinary course of law outside the 
field of military operations. No American 
President ever wielded such power as that 
which was thrust into Lincoln's hands. It 
is to be hoped that no American President 
ever will have to be entrusted with such 
power again. But no man was ever en- 
trusted with it to whom its seductions were 
less dangerous than they proved to be to 
Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous care 
he endeavored, even under the most trying 
circumstances, to remain strictly within 
the constitutional limitations of his author- 
ity; and whenever the boundary became 
indistinct, or when the dangers of the situ- 
ation forced him to cross it, he was equally 
careful to mark his acts as exceptional 
measures, justifiable only by the imperative 



Abraham Lincoln in 

necessities of the civil war, so that they 
might not pass into history as precedents 
for similar acts in time of peace. It is an 
unquestionable fact that during the recon- 
struction period which followed the war, 
more things were done capable of serving 
as dangerous precedents than during the 
war itself. Thus it may truly be said of 
him not only that under his guidance the 
republic was saved from disruption and the 
country was purified of the blot of slavery, 
but that, during the stormiest and most 
perilous crisis in our history, he so con- 
ducted the government and so wielded his 
almost dictatorial power as to leave essen- 
tially intact our free institutions in all 
things that concern the rights and liberties 
of the citizen. He understood well the 
nature of the problem. In his first mes- 
sage to Congress he defined it in admirably 
pointed language : " Must a government 
be of necessity too strong for the liberties 
of its own people, or too weak to maintain 
its own existence ? Is there in all repub- 



112 Abraham Lincoln 

lies this inherent weakness ? " This ques- 
tion he answered in the name of the great 
American republic, as no man could have 
answered it better, with a triumphant 
-No." 

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln 
died at the right moment for his fame. 
However that may be, he had, at the time 
of his death, certainly not exhausted his 
usefulness to his country. He was proba- 
bly the only man who could have guided 
the nation through the perplexities of the 
reconstruction period in such a manner as 
to prevent in the work of peace the revival 
of the passions of the war. He would in- 
deed not have escaped serious controversy 
as to details of policy ; but he could have 
weathered it far better than any other 
statesman of his time, for his prestige with 
the active politicians had been immensely 
strengthened by his triumphant reelection ; 
and, what is more important, he would 
have been supported by the confidence of 
the victorious Northern people that he 



Abraham Lincoln 113 

would do all to secure the safety of the 
Union and the rights of the emancipated 
negro, and at the same time by the con- 
fidence of the defeated Southern people 
that nothing would be done by him from 
motives of vindictiveness, or of unreason- 
ing fanaticism, or of a selfish party spirit. 
" With malice toward none, with charity 
for all," the foremost of the victors would 
have personified in himself the genius of 
reconciliation. 

He might have rendered the country a 
great service in another direction. A few 
days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed 
out to a friend the crowd of office-seekers 
besieging his door. " Look at that," said 
he. " Now we have conquered the rebel- 
lion, but here you see something that may 
become more dangerous to this republic 
than the rebellion itself." It is true, Lin- 
coln as President did not profess what we 
now call civil service reform principles. 
He used the patronage of the government 
in many cases avowedly to reward party 



1 14 Abraham Lincoln 

work, in many others to form combinations 
and to produce political effects advantage- 
ous to the Union cause, and in still others 
simply to put the right man into the right 
place. But in his endeavors to strengthen 
the Union cause, and in his search for able 
and useful men for public duties, he fre- 
quently went beyond the limits of his 
party, and gradually accustomed nimself to 
the thought that, while party service had 
its value, considerations of the public in- 
terest were, as to appointments to office, 
of far greater consequence. Moreover, 
there had been such a mingling of different 
political elements in support of the Union 
during the civil war that Lincoln, standing 
at the head of that temporarily united mot- 
ley mass, hardly felt himself, in the narrow 
sense of the term, a party man. And as 
he became strongly impressed with the 
dangers brought upon the republic by the 
use of public offices as party spoils, it is by 
no means improbable that, had he survived 
the all-absorbing crisis and found time to 



Abraham Lincoln 115 

turn to other objects, one of the most im- 
portant reforms of later days would have 
been pioneered by his powerful authority. 
This was not to be. But the measure of 
his achievements was full enough for im- 
mortality. 

To the younger generation Abraham 
Lincoln has already become a half -mythical 
figure, which, in the haze of historic dis- 
tance, grows to more and more heroic pro- 
portions, but also loses in distinctness of 
outline and feature. This is indeed the 
common lot of popular heroes ; but the 
Lincoln legend will be more than ordina- 
rily apt to become fanciful, as his individ- 
uality, assembling seemingly incongruous 
qualities and forces in a character at the 
same time grand and most lovable, was so 
unique, and his career so abounding in 
startling contrasts. As the state of society 
in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes 
away, the world will read with increasing 
wonder of the man who, not only of the 
humblest origin, but remaining the sim- 



Ii6 Abraham Lincoln 

plest and most unpretending of citizens, 
was raised to a position of power unprece- 
dented in our history ; who was the gen- 
tlest and most peace-loving of mortals, un- 
able to see any creature suffer without a 
pang in his own breast, and suddenly 
found himself called to conduct the great- 
est and bloodiest of our wars ; who wielded 
the power of government when stern reso- 
lution and relentless force were the order 
of the day, and then won and ruled the 
popular mind and heart by the tender sym- 
pathies of his nature ; who was a cautious 
conservative by temperament and mental 
habit, and led the most sudden and sweep- 
ing social revolution of our time ; who, 
preserving his homely speech and rustic 
manner even in the most conspicuous posi- 
tion of that period, drew upon himself the 
scoffs of polite society, and then, thrilled 
the soul of mankind with utterances of 
wonderful beauty and grandeur ; who, in 
his heart the best friend of the defeated 
South, was murdered because a crazy fa- 



Abraham Lincoln 117 

natic took him for its most cruel enemy ; 
who, while in power, was beyond measure 
lampooned and maligned by sectional pas- 
sion and an excited party spirit, and around 
whose bier friend and foe gathered to 
praise him — which they have since never 
ceased to do — as one of the greatest of 
Americans and the best of men. 




